[arch-projects] [netcfg] Call for testers: netctl

[Curtis Shimamoto]

On 12/30/12 at 01:49pm, Jouke Witteveen wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 30, 2012 at 1:16 AM, Curtis Shimamoto
> <sugar.and.scruffy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Seems pretty neat.  So far almost all functions seem to work. Though I
> > have come across an issue with netctl-auto.
> 
> Cool, can you share what you have tested?
> 
I have tried using the netctl interface to start/stop the wifi (home)
connection on my laptop.  I have not tried the wired functionality, and
probably won't be able to any time soon.  I use WiFI 99.999% of the time
on my laptop.

I also quickly discovered how well it integrates with systemd.  I really
like how enabling the profile through netctl is actually a call to
systemctl.  It works pretty great.

> > I cannot seem to store a profile.  I use
> > # netctl store [PROFILE]
> > and the result is simply the help/usage.  I checked with "list" and still
> > not active (no *).
> 
> That is because, as the help should tell you, 'store' does not take
> arguments ;-). Did you mean 'enable'?
> 
I actually was thinking that marking a profile as "active" would mark it
to be used with netctl-auto.  But I guess I was wrong on that.

After reading the above, it does indeed work without any arguments.  I
guess now that I look at the help and see that there is no [PROFILE]
appending list, store, restore, or stop-all.

Can you tell me then, what exacly does an "active" profile indicate?

> > Ergo, starting netctl-auto with:
> > # netctl-auto start wlan0
> > has no action.
> 
> This is unrelated to `netctl store`. As netctl-auto is inevitably a
> different beast by design, it indeed does not really bring profiles
> up, but rather configures the network according to them. This may
> sound strange, but it really is what is going on. For example: you can
> enable the netctl-auto service in systemd, which will run
> independently of other netctl@<profiles> and also not start/stop any
> of them.
> 
So I was a big fan of net-auto-wireless.  I loved the proper roaming
functionality from such a simple network manager.  Needless to say, I am
having a bit of trouble figuring out how to use netctl-auto.

>From what you are telling me above, I am kind of getting the idea that
maybe I need to enable all the profiles that I might be roaming between.
Then enable/start the netctl-auto service, which will handle switching
between the enabled profiles.  Is this right?

> Regards,
> - Jouke

>From what I have seen here so far, I am impressed.  As I said before, I
really like netcfg and particularly net-auto-wireless, so this really
feels more of less like the same thing, but meant for use with systemd.
The enable/disable is super intuitive, and I really like how it shows you
the symlink command it is running to enable/disable (like systemctl).

My only complaint is that usage of netctl-auto is not entirely straight
forward.  But I think this can probably be fixed with a couple lines in
the netctl.special man page, no problem.

I will test out netctl-auto and report back.

Regards,
-- 
Curtis Shimamoto
sugar.and.scruffy at gmail.com