Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 12:32:28 -0700 (PDT) From: David Wolfskill <david@catwhisker.org> To: freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: ifconfig wireless card options and DHCP Message-ID: <200107071932.f67JWSk27648@bunrab.catwhisker.org> In-Reply-To: <20010707151139.A27611@pir.net>
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>Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 15:11:39 -0400
>From: Peter Radcliffe <pir@pir.net>
>I noticed that the ifconfig changes for media options and for wireless
>card configuration ahve gone into -stable, been playing with them with
>my cisco 350 card and they seem to work well.
I've used them on my Cisco/Aironet 340 as well.
>Currently for setting the wireless card options I use a bunch of hacks
>to /etc/pccard_ether and lots of *control calls, but it would be nicer
>if these could now be done with ifconfig in one call.
Maybe. More below.
>Seems like this would be easy currently for non-DHCP configured
>interfaces, but as soon as you specify DHCP in $ifconfig_${interface}
>you lose the ability to pass further arguments. In my opinion setting
>up some media options before DHCP is called could be generally useful
>with cards that need something to be forced before they will pass
>packets at all (such as 802.11b with WEP enabled).
>Looking at /etc/pccard_ether is looks like this patch would allow
>you to do things like:
> ifconfig_an0="DHCP wepmode on wepkey ThisIsAKey"
I have a couple of thoughts on that:
* Have you looked at /etc/start_if.* & /etc/stop_if.*?
* First, consider that we're discussing this on -mobile -- implying
that a reasonable approach should probably handle a case where the
machine in question moves from one environment to another.
Thus, from that perspective, depending on any (single) set of hard-
coded parameters seems to be less useful than providing a "hook" where
a person could insert some logic to use some mechanism to select among
possible alternatives -- whether engaging in a dialog with the user,
trying various (known) alternatives until something works (or the
program/script/... gives up), or something else I haven't thought of.
But in any case, I confess I'm not very enthusiastic about a way to
hard-code parameters.
So my approach was closer to the 2nd of the above alternatives: I
wrote a (Perl) script that uses a couple of files, one containing
information about different kinds of interfaces & how to specify
operational parameters (I did this before Brooks' ifconfig changes,
and was expecting that if I were in a position to need to use, say,
one of the "wi" devices instead of an "an", it would be Very Nice to
be able to do so), and the other file specifies (in a way that is as
device-independent as I could think of) what the characteristics were
of the various "locations" where I use the 802.11 card(s) -- things
like the SSID, whether or not to use WEP; if so, what key to use.
What I wrote up about the stuff is at
http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/FreeBSD; feel free to take a look....
(And I recall having heard a desire for pccard_ether to go away....)
Cheers,
david
--
David H. Wolfskill david@catwhisker.org
As a computing professional, I believe it would be unethical for me to
advise, recommend, or support the use (save possibly for personal
amusement) of any product that is or depends on any Microsoft product.
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