NAME¶
netenv - Configure your system for different network environments
SYNOPSIS¶
netenv
DESCRIPTION¶
netenv is an interactive utility to switch between different network
configurations. It does not accept any command line arguments.
On Debian systems, netenv can work with both PCMCIA and on-board network cards.
You can also use netenv to configure your windowmanager or your printing
environment. The
new menu item, however, will not work under many
circumstances (it might work with a PCMCIA card). The full documentation is
included in html format (see below).
Note that you either have to specify the boot parameter
NETENV=configname
or enter the chosen environment by hand during boot time. The boot process will
stop until you entered something. Alternatively, you can specify a timeout,
after which the default configuration will be used (see below). If you want to
change to the default configuration without waiting for the timeout, set
NETENV to the hostname of your computer.
Netenv needs the dialog binary for user interaction; if it cannot be found, it
will display an error message and exit.
The system administrator can also run
netenv during normal operation.
netenv will then ask wether to activate the changes by restarting the
networking now. In this case,
/etc/init.d/networking restart will be
executed as well as additional scripts specified in
NETENV_RUN_INIT_SCRIPTS
CONFIGURATION¶
For setting up different network configurations and related configuration files
like XF86Config, see the html-Documentation.
netenv will read the file
/etc/netenv/netenv.conf. You can specify
the following variables there:
- ALLOW_EXPERT
- If this is set to YES, you can enter "expert
mode" by pressing CANCEL in the chooser dialog. THIS IS A
SECURITY RISK! Everybody with physical access to your computer will get a
ROOT SHELL without any password! Do not leave your laptop
alone when this is set to YES. This feature is disabled by default.
- COLS
- The width of the screen used, in columns or characters. Default is
68.
- NETENV_DO_RESTART
- If set to yes, and netenv is called with a controlling tty (that
is, interactively by root instead of by the init script), netenv will
restart the network without asking. If set to never, it will not do
this, also without asking. Otherwise you will be asked, obviously.
- NETENV_TIMEOUT
- The time (in seconds) netenv will show the dialog before chosing the
default configuration. The default is 0, which means that it will wait
forever.
- NETENV_RUN_INIT_SCRIPTS
- If the system administrator runs netenv during normal system operation and
chooses to activate the changes at once, then the init scripts specified
in this variable are called with argument restart after calling
/etc/init.d/networking restart. You can use this to notify daemons
of the changed network configuration. The scripts have to reside in
/etc/init.d/ and must be specified as a space separated list, e.g.
NETENV_RUN_INIT_SCRIPTS="chrony myinitscript". Default is
none.
- NETENV_START_STOP_SCRIPTS
- In Debian, calling an init script with the argument restart means
that it will execute itself twice, first with the argument stop, then with
start. Some init scripts, however, do more than that. Currently I am only
aware of wwwoffle, which checks its online status before and switches back
to the same state after restart. (The netenv maintainer considers this a
bug, the wwwoffle maintainer a feature.) To be able to change from offline
to online, or vice versa, we have to work around this magic. This can be
done by stopping the service manually and starting it again, and that is
what is done for scripts in this variable (again a space separated list),
e.g. NETENV_START_STOP_SCRIPTS=wwwoffle (for further information,
see the html documentation).
- NETENV_REMEMBER_LAST
- Debian's netenv can also remember your last selection. You can enable this
by setting the variable to yes. Furthemore if you set it to
default, your last selection will be used in case of timeout (see
NETENV_TIMEOUT).
Note that the default values are set in the script before
/etc/netenv/netenv.conf is sourced. Thus, environment variables cannot
be used (and this doesn't make much sense since
netenv usually is not
called by a user.
Some other variables are also used and could, in principle, be defined in
/etc/netenv/netenv.conf, but aren't useful. See the executable
/sbin/netenv for further information.
REPORTING BUGS¶
Report bugs to Gerd Bavendiek <bav@epost.de>, or to the Debian Bugtracking
System if you're using this distribution.
SEE ALSO¶
Further documentation for
netenv can be found in
/usr/share/doc/netenv/netenv-en.html and
/usr/share/doc/netenv/netenv-de.html
AUTHOR¶
netenv was written by Gerd Bavendiek <bav@epost.de> and adapted for
Debian by Michael Meskes <meskes@debian.org>, Robert van der Meulen
<rvdm@debian.org> and Frank Küster <frank@kuesterei.ch>.
This manual page was written by Frank Küster.