[arch-general] netcfg testing and git packages

[Atanas Zhelev]

2009/2/16 James Rayner <iphitus at iphitus.org>:
> Hi
>
> The release beta cycle wasn't working well for netcfg. Small changes,
> bugs and many FR's got held up far too long while other work happened.
> To try and help get netcfg development going smoothly again I've
> uploaded some netcfg git PKGBUILDs  to the AUR to use instead of -beta
> releases.
>
> This way I can make those small changes, push it to git, and it can be
> tested immediately, while larger things can be safely done in another
> branch locally. When it's ready, rc's will be released.
>
> http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=23953
> http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=23954
>
> There's some fairly substantial changes in this release.
>  - Moving from net-tools to iproute
>     - iproute is the way forward. net-tools is long unmaintained, nor
> as capable.
>  - Moving from wireless_tools to pure wpa_supplicant
>     - More reliable, less quirks required. Hopefully more stable.
>     - As part of this, wireless moves into netcfg-wireless (dependency issues)
>
> Both of these require config changes. Once they're both stabilised I
> can release 2.2.x to give people time to migrate, and eventually 2.5
> which will use them by default. There are example configs included.
>
> More details on the wiki:
> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Network_Profiles_development
>
> The wpa_supplicant move needs a significant amount of testing. I
> havn't tested WEP (testing hardware is gone), and net-auto may not
> work presently. WPA and custom WPA configs work in my testing.
>
> If there's any criticisms or comments about the way this is going, the
> code, netcfg, etc, please let me know. I'd like to make 2.2 a good
> release and I think these changes are important. I'm hoping they'll
> make netcfg simpler and more reliable.
>
> Cheers,
> James
>

Hi,

i just tested netcfg-git. It didn't work. I have broadcom BCM4312 chip
and i'm using the broadcom-wl driver. netcfg-git failed with
"- eth1 is not a valid wireless interface."

because of this block in /usr/lib/network/connections/wireless :

if [[ ! -d /sys/class/net/$INTERFACE/phy80211 ]]; then
        err_append "$INTERFACE is not a valid wireless interface."
        return 1
    fi

the wl.ko module doesn't provide phy80211 directory in the sys
filesystem it seems. Or at least i don't have it. I tried to comment
the test to see what happens. In this case netcfg just hanged trying
to bring the connection up. netcfg 2.1.x is working fine.

--
BRS
Atanas Zhelev