Re: Xisp and mutiple ISPs

[glhenni@cs.sandia.gov (Gary L. Hennigan)]

john@dhh.gt.org writes:
| Frederic Breitwieser writes:
| > I do this in NT currently with no issues - but I have a program to do so.
| > At the rate I'm going, give me a month to have something that works for
| > you guys to lobotomize.
|
| The problem is not so much one of code as it is one of policy.  I could
| hack out a script that would munge the relevant files into submission, but
| a real solution must be scalable and compatible with everything elses that
| needs those files.

Exactly!

Like I said, I have a script, and it works fine, but it's hardly a
general solution and almost certainly wouldn't suit the needs of
others.

I would think something along the lines of a /etc/dialups
directory with subdirectories for each ISP that contains the necessary
files. So, say I have 3 ISP's named, Dog_Slow, Too_Expensive, Work,
then I'd have a directory structure like:

/etc/dialups
  Dog_Slow/
    etc/resolv.conf
    etc/hosts
    etc/smail/routers
    etc/smail/config
  Too_Expensive/
    etc/resolv.conf
    etc/hosts
    etc/smail/routers
    etc/smail/config
  Work/
    etc/resolv.conf
    etc/hosts
    etc/smail/routers
    etc/smail/config

Now the script, or program, that does the setup for a specific ISP
just needs to traverse the entire directory tree for that ISP and copy
the files to the necessary system directory before initiating the
connection to the ISP. It's easy to add and remove files from the
setup by merely creating them in the proper location under the
/etc/dialups/<ISP Name> directory structure. The tricky bit is that
some of them may require that daemons be restarted, sendmail comes to
mind, although I don't use that on my Debian systems, and/or other
actions besides simple file copies.

That's half the battle, then you need a nice interface to generate
these files automatically and copy them to their respective locations
before connecting to the desired ISP. And all of this needs to be
doable by a user in the proper group, as well as root. Personally I'd
have no problem with requiring root to set up each of the ISPs and
then just have them accessible by users in a specific group.

That's my idea anyway, and I'll probably modify my scripts to work
along these lines unless someone can offer any suggestions on a piece
of software that already works like this, or let me know if someone
else is already working on something like this.

Gary