Re: 2 questions...

[Derek Atkins <warlord MIT EDU>]

Quoting Colin Walters <walters verbum org>:

> If you're using network login, your computer is tied specifically to
> that network; you can't switch networks, which invalidates a lot of the
> point of NetworkManager as it is today.  For the short term you could
> just use your OS native wireless networking scripts, hardcode the
> wireless network and WEP key in /etc/whatever. 

Actually, that's not true at all.  I could be in any of a dozen different
buildings at MIT, at my house, at Usenix or IETF or some other conference --
and I should be able to use my standard network login from any of those
locations.  I am not at all tied to a specific network.

Moreover, I have a bunch of network services that don't like to startup without
network.  Even now I have to restart ntpd, sendmail, and athena-zhm by hand.. 
And I don't even want to think about the hell that OpenAFS would be!  It's just
so much better to start the network earlier, rather than later, regardless of
whether it's a wired or wireless network.

> Longer term it probably makes sense to have NetworkManager handle these
> oddball cases (including things such as static IP), but there isn't
> anyone working on it AFAIK.

Yea, every once in a blue moon do I need a static IP..  It would be nice to have
it available.  OTOH I don't think it's odd at all to want the network to come
up during the boot sequence.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord MIT EDU                        PGP key available