netplug [was Re: Automatically bringing ethernet interfaces up when the cableis connected]

[David Zeuthen]

On Mon, 2003-12-15 at 18:42, Bryan O'Sullivan wrote:
> How about decoupling it into a daemon that generates dbus events, and
> another daemon that listens for dbus events and performs sensible
> default actions?  That way, you get modularity, the ability to change
> the behaviour if necessary, plus a reasonable default behaviour.

This is actually, in part, what I'm trying to achieve with freedesktop
HAL. As you can see on this screenshot

 http://freedesktop.org/~david/hal-link-detection.png

a number of devices is showed, including network devices with ethernet
link detection.

The HAL spec defines properties, key/value pairs, for each device-type.
HAL is designed to be able to work on other OS'es than Linux (since
GNOME+friends run on other OS'es than Linux), but I've only got a Linux
2.6 version so far.

The GUI application you see is talking with the HAL daemon using D-BUS
so inserting/removing a USB or PCMCIA device just works; e.g. the list
is dynamically updated.

Disclaimer: I still need to update the HAL spec with networking
properties and other stuff (the old spec is a bit outdated) and make a
release. I plan to do this before Christmas. 

Cheers,
David