[gentoo-user] Bluetooth-Hotspot

[Florian Philipp]

Hi list!

I could need some help.

Long story (if you don't want to hear, scroll down): 

For six months a year I'm attending a university of cooperative
education and although I pay 1000€ a year for infrastructure and stuff
like that its services for students are a big joke. Especially its
WLAN-hotspot isn't nearly up to the job.

Because I have an UMTS-card my idea was to set up a personal area
network (PAN) via bluetooth and act as a router to support my friends
during the WLAN-outages.

Most of the job is already done but I have problems setting up a
DHCP-server and the network configuration. Because the virtual ethernet
interface only exists when a connection is established, dhcpd doesn't
start from the init-script and, although I haven't tried it yet, normal
network config shouldn't fare any better. When the last client
disconnects, all the configuration is gone and when someone reconnects,
I have to call "ifconfig bnep0 192.168.4.1" again.

Short question:

How do I automate the configuration of network interfaces and related
deamons when the whole interface keeps appearing and disappearing out of
the clear blue sky?

I don't think ifplugd will be up to the job (haven't tried it though).

Thanks in advance!

Florian Philipp