How does Fedora want "ordinary people" to manage mobile network computing

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Tue, 25 Apr 2006, Erik Hemdal wrote:

>
>> From: Joel Jaeggli <joelja at darkwing.uoregon.edu>
>> On Mon, 24 Apr 2006, Paul Johnson wrote:
>>
>>> I'm an "old hand" at Linux, and am able to make my wired & wireless
>>> connections work, but only with some difficulty.  Yesterday
>> I helped a
>>> young lady install linux on a laptop and found it darned-near
>>> impossible to explain to her how she is supposed to handle
>> the problem
>>> of going for place-to-place, using different wired and wireless
>>> networks.  So I wondered if the Gnome or KDE folks had worked this
>>> out.
>>> I have never figured out how "profiles" are supposed to simplify this.
>>
>> Profiles allow you to lump settings for multiple devices
>> together, as well as use the same names for each device with
>> a different configuration under each profile. so profiles are
>> in fact exactly what you want.
>>
>
> Now that Prof. Johnson has brought this up, here's another query on just how
> profiles are supposed to work.  For my part, I have always had similar
> difficulties.  I commonly find that setting up network profiles in
> system-config-network fails even for hardwired network connections.  In
> general I find that DNS settings are not reset when I move between profiles,
> and as Prof. Johnson notes, the default gateway can also go awry.  Sometimes
> the profile sticks with my "work" static IP address and fails to change to
> DHCP when I switch to my "school" profile.  I've found ways of avoiding the
> worst kinds of problems, but not by getting everything to work flawlessly.
>
> I don't usually have to go into /etc/sysconfig, but I do have to manually
> change IP and DNS and bounce interfaces.  I have had to since FC1 on all
> machines I've tried.  I chalked it up to either 1) having too many networks
> to switch between (my record is four) 2) my doing something stupid, or 2)
> profiles just being broken,but in a way that has some workaround that I just
> never found.
>
> Any pointer on how profiles are supposed to work would be a benefit.
>
>>>
>>> While trying to describe this to the new linux user, I was
>> struck by
>>> how crappy it is.
>
> I'm not prepared to go this far, because I tend to assume I've either done
> something dumb here or just missed something in the flood of list posts.
> Still and all, Prof. Johnson isn't alone in seeing anomalies with profiles.

How it's supposed to work:

In system-config-network, make a copy of the interface (say eth0) and name 
it something else (say eth0-office).  Make changes to eth0-office so it 
works at the office.  Make another copy and call it eth0-home, and edit it 
so it works at home.  Create a profile called Office and make eth0-office 
active in that profile.  Create a profile called Home and make eth0-home 
active in that.  You should now be able to switch profiles in 
system-config-network, system-control-network, or the network monitor 
applet.

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Manual/custom-guide/s1-network-profiles.html

How it actually works:

I don't seem to be able to get devices to stay in their configured 
profiles reliably.  I've switched to NetworkManager.

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs