Paul Johnson wrote: > I'm an "old hand" at Linux, and am able to make my wired & wireless > connections work, but only with some difficulty. Yesterday I helped a > young lady install linux on a laptop and found it darned-near > impossible to explain to her how she is supposed to handle the problem > of going for place-to-place, using different wired and wireless > networks. So I wondered if the Gnome or KDE folks had worked this > out. Only have worked with wired networks...but in that case the key was "Network Profiles". Couldn't find you any "Fedora" documentation on this but have a look at http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/sysadmin-guide/s1-network-profiles.html and the rest of that manual. Ed > > Just for example, I need to have these devices configured > > 1. Wired home router: dhcp > 2. Wired for office 1: static ip, gateway & /etc/resolv.conf > 3. Wired for office 2: static ip, gateway & /etc/resolv.conf > 4. Wireless for home router, SSID="home1" and 24 digit WEP key > 5. Wireless in pizza restaurant, SSID="fred's pizza", but no WEP key > 6. Wireless at school, SSID="JAYHAWK", no WEP key > 7. Wireless at George's house, SSID="casa", 10 digit WEP key > > It is a bit of a pain to set all these up. system-config-network > creates funny looking names for these like eth1:1 and if I turn on one > wireless device, all of them of the same type say they are active. I > have never figured out how "profiles" are supposed to simplify this. > At home, sometimes I need the wire, sometimes I need one of the two > wireless routers. Sometimes I cannot get system-config-network to > work at all, and instead I have to hand edit one of the working files > in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts. Generally can make this work. > > There are 3 gotchas that kill me now and then. > > 1. DHCP will replace the dns setting in /etc/resolv.conf and when I go > to a static IP, that value does not get reset and I have no internet > unless I manually set the ip value. > > 2. The value of the "Gateway" is set by the wireled IP settings, and > if I go to a place with dhcp, it DOES reset the dns values in > /etc/resolv.conf, but sometimes the gateway is not reset. > > 3. If both eth0 (wire) and eth1 (wireless) happen to be active--as > happens on her system by default after a suspend to RAM--then NEITHER > ethernet interface works. THere is no wireless service until you type > "/sbin/ifdown eth0" and there is no wire unless you type "/sbin/ifdown > eth1". > > > While trying to describe this to the new linux user, I was struck by > how crappy it is. Just resetting the DNS number when going to a > static IP seems like a strange thing to do. And in the end, we > compromised and agree she will only be able to use her computer on one > network, because it is too damn complicated to make it work in various > places, all with different SSIDs and WEP keys. > > And don't even get started on the problem of scanning for available > servers. But if a person cannot open a terminal and type > "/sbin/iwlist scan", then he/she is likely to be totally screwed, > because if you don't put in an SSID explicitly, it almost never finds > a network. In fact, if you don't have the right channel, it often > does not work. > > So, in conclusion, I can make this work but I am baffled to figure out > what the Gnome people think these users new ought to do. Surely they > are not expected to open a terminal, are they? I find that hard to > believe in light of the fact that new Fedora/Gnome has disappeared the > "open terminal here" from its default right-click menu and hidden that > function away in the "nautilus-open-terminal" package. > > -- > Paul E. Johnson > Professor, Political Science > 1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504 > University of Kansas > -- The next person to mention spaghetti stacks to me is going to have his head knocked off. -- Bill Conrad
