[arch-announce] netcfg v2.5.2 - note: change in auto wireless config

[Arch Linux: Recent news updates: James Rayner]

James Rayner wrote:

This release brings a completely new auto wireless/wired configuration. The old
net-auto is deprecated and no longer included. There are also some very minor
configuration changes that may affect a few people. Move to new auto-
wireless/wired The new automatic connection has proper roaming support and will
prove more reliable than the old setup - particularly with more complicated
wireless configurations. To migrate to the new automatic wireless setup: 1.
pacman -S core/wpa_actiond 2. Set WIRELESS_INTERFACE="" to your wireless
interface in /etc/rc.conf. For example WIRELESS_INTERFACE="wlan0" 3. Add net-
auto-wireless to your DAEMONS=() array. Note: wpa-config profiles do not work
with this, convert them to wpa-configsection profiles. An example is included in
/etc/network.d/examples/ The new auto-wired uses similar configuration - follow
the above instructions except use the net-auto-wired daemon, and WIRED_INTERFACE
configuration option. New features: - net-auto-wireless/wpa_actiond - Real
wireless roaming/auto connection. Based on same principle as autowifi. Requires
optional dependency: wpa_actiond - net-auto-wired - automatic ethernet
configuration. Requires optional dependency: ifplugd - Interface configurations
- set options for all profiles using an interface - Output hooks - Internal
cleanup & improvement Internal changes: - Uses wpa_supplicant for all wireless
configuration by default, including wep/none security. This adds improves
support for most and should improve reliability. - Uses iproute by default for
all static configuration. net_tools which contains ifconfig is effectively
obsolete and hasnt seen a release for over 8 years. The 'ethernet-iproute' and
'ethernet' connection types have been merged together to simply 'ethernet'. All
options are still supported and existing configurations will continue to work
for both types. A symlink has been made to ensure that profiles using 'ethernet-
iproute' will continue to function. Changes in configuration syntax - net-auto
and AUTO_NETWORKS is now deprecated in favour of net-auto-wireless/net-auto-
wired. - wireless: If you were previously specifying the wpa_supplicant driver
in WPA_OPTS, you now need to specify it in WPA_DRIVER. - wireless: iwconfig
based configuration for wep/none can be used by changing to wep-old or none-old.
This should not be necessary and is left in place only for the possibility of
very old drivers that do not support wpa_supplicant. - ethernet-iproute: As
'ethernet' is now iproute based, those using 'ethernet-iproute' can revert the
name. There is a symlink in place, so existing configurations of either name
will continue to function regardless. - wireless-dbus: Unsupported. The
wpa_supplicant dbus interface isn't particularly well documented and it doesn't
fit well into the netcfg codebase. There is a symlink in place so that
configurations using wireless-dbus will continue to function using the
'wireless' connection scripts. Download: netcfg 2.5.2 is in [core]. Source:
ftp://ftp.archlinux.org/other/netcfg/netcfg-2.5.2.tar.gz PKGBUILD: In subversion
Documentation: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Network_Profiles
Contributors: I had a few big contributors to this release: Jim Pryor: Many
internal changes and improvements Thomas Bächler: wpa_actiond based auto
roaming/connection Thanks guys! Bugs: On the bug tracker as always.

URL: http://www.archlinux.org/news/487/