network profiles - do they work for you? they are broken for me!

[John DeDourek]

Valent Turkovic wrote:
> Hi,
> I tried using network profiles on my Fedora Core 6 and Fedora 7
> systems and they don't work for me.
>
> Can you tell me if you use network profiles build into
> system-config-network and system-control-network tools?
>
> When I use gui system-config-network to setup network profiles no
> matter which one I choose and edit I end up with all the profiles with
> the same settings!
>
> I can't setup two different profiles!
>
> Can you please explain how do you use network profiles via
> system-config-network ?
>
> Thank you.
>
First, I am doing this from home, from memory, so I can't
give you exact wordings of menu items, nor exact location
of menus.  But this general procedure works for FC5.  I can't
at the moment verify it for FC6 or FC7.

I use the following procedure.
--I leave the configuration of all the interfaces as installed
--I leave the contents of the default profile as installed

When I want a new profile, say for my home lan, using the
GUI:
-- Make a "copy" of the appropriate lan interface
-- Edit the copy of the lan interface (leaving the original
   alone);  I usually change the name of the interface from
   the "Copy of eth0" to something like "HomeLan"; I also edit
   whatever other features I want to select for the home LAN,
   e.g. static or dynamic IP, etc.
-- Create a new profile, say HomeLan; it doesn't bother me
   to have a profile and interface named the same; however
   if you find that confusing, name the interface "HomeLanIface"
   and name the profile "HomeLanProfile"
-- Make sure only the appropriate interface (e.g. HomeLan" is
   now checked from the profile (HomeLan)
-- Save it; (I think File->Save
You're done

What is hapening behind the scenes:

Each of those interfaces is a script file containing bash
variable assignments.  You need a separate file for the LAN
interface for each profile, because they need to have different
values assigned to the variables.  When you say that all the
profiles are the same, I am presuming that you are not making
a separate copy of the interface for each profile.  So of course,
you are always essentially constantly changing the values in
the one and only interface file.  These files are kept somewhere
like /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/

Each of the profiles is a directory, I think under
/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/   In that directory is
a symbolic link to each of the "device" files that is
configured for that interface.

When you switch profiles, the "device" files (which are
named something like "ifcfg-HomeLanIface") for the old
profile are deleted from /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ and
the "device" files for the new profile are copied in.
Actually, I think that's wrong; the scripts are probably not
copied, but links are created.  I seem to recall that they
are hard links rather than symbolic links.

BTW, if you use the commands /sbin/ifup and /sbin/ifdown rather
than the GUI to bring the interfaces up and down, use the
device name (interface name) that you created in the GUI,
not the Linux interface name as you would use it in
/sbin/ifconfig.  That is, use
    /sbin/ifup HomeLanIface
    /sbin/ifdown HomeLanIface

Hope this is useful to you.