David Nielsen wrote:
fre, 26 05 2006 kl. 11:48 -0600, skrev Philip Prindeville:
David Hollis wrote:
On Fri, 2006-05-26 at 11:14 -0600, Philip Prindeville wrote:
Sorry for the slight digression, but can someone explain to me why
NetworkManager has a dependency on wpa_supplicant? Not all
wireless networks use WEP/WPA (some are wide open). Further,
not all networked machines (like my desktop) have Wireless NIC's.
It would seem to be an unnecessary (and unfounded) dependency.
Uh, unless I really don't understand your question, the dependency is
there because SOME/MOST networks do use WEP/WPA.
Not true. A lot of hotspots (Starbuck's, Boise airport, certain municipal
networks like Portland, OR, etc. are all open access, with no WEP/WPA).
It is sometimes or even *mostly* the case, but not always. Therefore, in
the cases where it doesn't apply, no dependency should exist.
The RPM should have some way of detecting if wireless cards are present
(perhaps using the contents of /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-*) and
then inferring a dependence of wpa_supplicant (which as I said, only
applies IFF you have wireless hardware and the networks you use
require authentication and/or privacy).
I read that correctly you want to install the rpm in runtime.
What? No. You can have conditional requirements in the RPM... such
as "*iff* the hardware I'm running on has a wireless NIC, then require
wpa_supplicant." So the RPM can detect a wireless adapter and
conditionally define a Requires: wpa_supplicant line in the NetworkManager
RPM.
"Oh it looks like you have wifi and you want to connect using WEP/WPA..
please give me the root password."
That sounds like an utterly scary scenerio. You are forgetting the the
system is dynamic, so the user can insert a wifi capable device at any
time and to connect to a protected network you would then for first time
require the root password to install the rpm.
The user is also completely capable of manually installing wpa_supplicant
if he knows he will be using a plug-in wireless card (though more and
more wireless cards are mini-PCI, and hence don't get unplugged much).
This would be better than having an unconditional requirement for wireless
support in wired-only (desktop) environments.
This should just magically work, which means the package must be
installed. The natural thing to do this would be make networkmanager
depend on it. What is the tradeoff here, a dependency on 241kb package
vs. having to install something in runtime (the logic to do this would
probably be comparable in size to be honest).
It's not the size of the package. It's the dependencies that that
package in turn
has (like pcsc-libs-lite, etc), the vulnerabilities and exploits that
that package
has plug all of its dependencies, etc.
Please tell me I read your proposal wrong.
I never said anything about run-time. It was purely install-time. You
can detect most of the hardware at install-time. What you can't (i.e.
a plug-in PCMCIA card) you can anticipate for and install the
wpa_supplicant package for anyway.
-Philip
- David
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