net.interface_up and unimplemented net.80203 properties (linux)

[Brian J. Tarricone]

On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:44:32 +1300, Simon Geard wrote:

> On Sun, 2007-03-11 at 19:05 -0700, Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
> > Last I checked (NetworkManager 0.6.4), NM couldn't even be built
> > without GNOME being present.  My understanding is that HAL is
> > intended to be cross-desktop: what about Xfce users? KDE users?
> 
> NM is also intended to be cross-desktop, and 0.6.4 can be built
> without Gnome support by passing --without-gnome. With this, you get
> the daemon only, no UI - obviously useful for KDE users who use
> KNetworkManager instead of the Gnome nm-applet.

This didn't work for me the last time I tried it, but it's not really
the point here.  I want to *not use NetworkManager*, neither the GUI nor
the daemon.

> No Gtk-only equivalent exists at the moment (to my knowledge, at
> least), but but writing your own would surely be a better idea than
> trying to re-implement the current functionality already provided by
> NM...

Which is essentially what I'm doing, but some extra functionality in
HAL would be useful for this.  I want to get away from the
NetworkManager daemon; adding it as a dependency for my application
defeats the purpose of my application, as my app implements most of
what the NM daemon does (just in a much less over-engineered way; not
that I'm trying to rip on NM here: it's a great piece of software,
just a bit large for my taste).

Regardless, IMO my point still stands: forcing users to install and run
a large appliction such as NetworkManager (and dhcdbd) to be able to use
apps that need proper HAL support for network interfaces is a bit silly
when a < 500-line HAL addon plus a couple scripts will suffice.

I'm perfectly ok with keeping my HAL addon with my app, which will get
installed with scripts and .fdi files to enable the functionality I
need.  I'm merely hoping that it might be deemed possibly-useful to
other users of HAL.  This is the first time I've worked with HAL so
closely, and I wanted to test the waters first before coming up with a
patch.

	-brian