On 2008-12-29, Miklos Vajna <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 12:15:01PM +0000, Csaba Henk <[email protected]> wro=
> te:
> Agreed. I use several network profiles on my notebook as well. So you
> create a profile 'home' for your home settings, a new one 'work' for
> settings at your workplace, and so on.
>
> I know that currently the netconfig curses interface just lets you
> create a default profile only. Managing multiple profiles is possible if
> you read man netconfig or if you install gnetconfig. This could be
> improved in the future as well, if needed.
[...]
> Maybe you missed that the same interface can be listed in multiple
> profiles with different essed/wpa_psk values? :)

Hmm, for standard use cases I think this multiple profile thingy is the
most annoying solution.

Why?

Because it makes you specify a parameter manually which could be easily
found out by the computer. If you usually use two wireless networks, one
with essid, say, Formalhaut, and other with essid Locris, then that dumb
box can decide which one to use by iterating over the list of available
networks and see if the list contains an access point named Formalhaut
or Locris and you don't need to interfere. Moreover, this utter
cleverness is actually implemented by wpa_supplicant. This
one-essid+wpa_psk-per-profile scheme is just a step back; it's a
renouncement of relying on the niceties of wpa_supplicant.

(OK, I don't know if wpa_supplicant can handle the case when the
wireless network is named Linksys at both scenes, etc etc. I don't say
you never need multiple profiles, but I do think in most cases it's
not necessary to have to choose manually between profiles.) 

So, I'd say, at the end of the day, many users want a setup which works
like the one with the hooks for wpa_supplicant (though maybe they don't
know of or think into or care about it). There should be a more
streamlined way to get at this.

>> Yes, a nice warning in the generated wpa_supplicant.conf seems to do the
>> job, too.
>
> Care to send a patch for this or should I do it?

Yep, I send one.

> If you want something that should not be included later in the
> changelog, then put it between the three dashes and the diffstat.
[...]
> (If you send for example a fix to configure.ac, then mentioning the
> project in the subject is appreciated, yes.)

Thanks for the nice explanation.

Csaba

_______________________________________________
Frugalware-devel mailing list
[email protected]
http://frugalware.org/mailman/listinfo/frugalware-devel

Reply via email to