Re: [gentoo-dev] Proposal: networking startup script rewrite

[Stroller]

Having not dug around in the net startup scripts either deeply or 
recently, I'm not qualified to comment on all your points, but I'll 
respond to the ones that I can.


On 14 Oct 2003, at 3:17 am, Michael J. Cohen wrote:
>
> etc-updating 99 files is a pain, but it often happens when upgrading
> baselayout, etc.  If a user wipes out his configs for iptables etc by
> overwriting accidentally, he is in a bind.  However if we do not
> provide a /
> etc/conf.d/net and only a /etc/conf.d/net.sample; this is allievated.

Yes, I much prefer this format - perhaps it would be extreme or 
convoluted to have every configuration file provided as config.example, 
but I would love to see Gentoo standardising on it for all files that 
the user is likely to change, at least.


>> I'd agree that if a script to call `brctl` appropriately was installed
>> by net-misc/bridge-utils then it would make configuration a lot
>> easier...
>
> Currently, there are several unrelated scripts for each userspace
> networking
> tool. iptables, (your proposed bridge-utils), ipsec...

Well, my "proposed" bridge-utils isn't "proposed" - it's in the Portage 
tree. It is the ebuild for "brctl" and the other user-space Bridging 
utilities.

> The new system would most likely call the related /etc/init.d/bridge
> script or
> similar in order to set things up, rather than invoking brctl
> directly...

Erm... well, I rather gathered that the idea of all the separate 
scripts in /etc/init.d/ was that they could be called independently. In 
this way they can be added to different runlevels or restarted by the 
administrator after configuration changes; if one script relies on 
another there is the "depends" declaration. Would your 
/etc/init.d/bridge script be safe to call separately like that..?

I agree that the `brctl` stuff should not be in the main network 
scripts. I've attached a copy of my *extremely tatty* 
/etc/init.d/net.br0 script, so that you can see that this can be done 
fairly elegantly within the current framework. I just copied my default 
runlevel to /etc/runlevels/bridge, removed the existing eth0 & eth1 
from that runlevel & added net.br0, so I can switch between them at 
will.

Sorry to harp on about it, but if a (much tidier) version of this were 
distributed with net-misc/bridge-utils then there would be no need at 
all for the base networking init system to refer to bridging at all; I 
believe this is much neater for users who are not interested in 
bridging.

>  This
> would save some headaches with updating the script every time we
> package up
> some new network tool.

Hmmn... y'see I see smaller scripts as easier to maintain. If one 
developer wants to change (say) the way that wireless LAN cards behave 
at init, he simply edits that script without having to know about how 
bridges behave, or risking fouling up that behavior. Of course, if 
wireless bridges require special cases, then that's a job for the 
bridging maintainers (whoever they may be).

> What about wireless + roaming, advanced routing/bridging, ipsec, vpns,
> vlans,
> pppoe... all of these things either are not supported or are broken up
> into
> tiny bits of configuration files everywhere.  It would be much easier
> if we
> had one manual with plenty of examples and one configuration file for
> people
> to edit.  Not only is it easier on the developers, but it is easier on
> the
> user for updates and for configuration.  The user no longer needs to
> hunt
> down where he made what change to what interface in what file.

I disagree. I prefer small configuration files; I find smaller files 
easier to parse & to deal with than larger ones. YMMV. Locating the 
appropriate configuration file is simply a matter of `ls /etc/conf.d`. 
For the developers, I would have thought the same applied - they can 
edit the notworking file they're interested in without risking b0rking 
up anything else.

I see the current seup as good modularity, but I appreciate this is a 
matter of preference.

>> I don't know much (erm... well, anything) about VLANs, so I'm probably
>> missing some of your reasoning against the current system...
>
> It was mentioned to me that it was quite challenging to add VLAN
> suport into
> the current net scripts.

Ok... if you say so. But I don't know why. Would it be easier to add 
VLAN support to a single net-startup script than to the present 
setup..? Can you explain why, please..?

>> .... I once tried parsing one of
>> Mandrake's network initialisation scripts, but floundered wildly -
>> with
>> Gentoo you know intuitively to look for iptables stuff in
>> /etc/conf.d/iptables and so on.
>
> Seems like it would make more sense to me if /etc/conf.d/net was your
> one stop
> shop for all your networking needs.

I forgot to explain the reason I had problems with the Mandrake network 
script I mentioned - because it was so damn big! There were pages of 
it! On that occasion I was only looking to see how the PPP startup 
worked - all the pages of Ethernet (and presumably VLAN &c) 
configuration just confused me impossibly. I now use Ethernet - I have 
no desire to see PPP options in my configuration scripts.

At present /etc/conf.d/ is your one stop shop for all your networking 
needs - and it's split neatly into manageable departments.

Stroller.