Obviously if you are configuring a server you do not want others than the
administrator setting up the network, but if you are the sole user of a
laptop there needs to be a safe way for the user (non-technical) to do
this as the user moves from one location to another.
One option that has occurred to me is to establish a group which is
allowed
to edit /etc/network/interfaces. The obvious problem with this is the
up and
down commands, which allow any program to be run as root. Fortunately
there
is an answer, which is to use the "macro" facility that ifupdown has
(the one
used for wireless-xxx) and then it gets controllable and therefore safe
(if
used properly). This would need either to abandon up and down all
together
or to have a switch (presumable in /etc/defaults/ifupdown) which enabled
the
use of this group and disabled the use of up and down.