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

[Jouke Witteveen]

On Sun, Dec 30, 2012 at 5:47 PM, Curtis Shimamoto
<sugar.and.scruffy at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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?

A profile is 'active' if it is 'running', 'up', 'started', or however
you'd like to call it. The name 'active' is chosen to conform to
systemd's notion of 'active' :-).

>> > 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?

You don't need to enable them. It takes all profiles on the interface
into account, unless a profile sets ExcludeAuto. The netctl-auto
should work nearly identical to the old net-auto-wireless, so you
should be good.
Indeed, you did spot the first bug: ExcludeAuto was not documentated!
This is fixed in git now.

>> 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