Guessing gateway by ip-address...
* Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> [031006 17:55]:
> > Ok, that explains the behaviour. Now my confusion is limited to the
> > question why anyone might think an IP-address without the dns and/or
> > gateway address is of any value.
>
> Given an IP, say 192.168.0.23. I would guess the gateway to be
> 192.168.0.1, then netmask to be /24 and the DNS to be 192.168.0.1 too.
The netmask might be quite usual, but I'd see the gateway as a 50% bet.
At least I was told there are nets with .1 instead of .254, which I find
in my environment exlusively.
And if I remember correctly (Neighter have the computers to test
nor the checked out d-i source near currently) the dns-servers was the
last thing it asked (i.e. has the lowest priority) while it seems to
be the wildest guess.
> DNS being the wildest guess here. I would prefer a multiline formular
> there. One field per question and while you change a field the other,
> not yet edited fields, would change according tothe guessing
> algorithm.
>
> So normaly one would just enter 192.168.0.23 in the IP field and skip
> ahead to "continue".
>
> Any volunteres to add a new widget to (c)debconf?
I think the old way was good enough, in asking IP and then give those
guessed defaults pre-filed in the next questions. (Thus easy to press
Enter if they are correct guess. And also normaly more easily changed
to the correct values than typing the whole at once).
> > [1]: While it finaly configured the network properly, it never
> > exited without error, as it stumbled over doing things twice.
>
> That should never happen :) Bad, bad, bad. Happy bug hunting.
Well, that looks like an easy one. Will put it on my todo list to
look what it was exactly. But the point is that things like this
will always happen. There is no easy way to ensure all scripts
are idempotent and none script will ever fail by returncode when
it did all it had to do corectly. (When it shall also report
real errors as such)
Hochachtungsvoll,
Bernhard R. Link
--
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve
nor will he ever receive either. (Benjamin Franklin)
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