Working in different network environments
I have two systems running debian that are used in different network
environments that need to be adapted to. Part of this problem is very
typical of notebooks so I assume there is already a solution for this.
The first of these two systems is a notebook, that I use at work in
the companies network, at home in my home network or without any
network. These 3 cases differ in quite some aspects:
- Different IP addesses/subnet masks/default routers/DNS servers.
This is already done by DHCP if there is a DHCP server in the
network.
However, if I boot without any network or a network with no DHCP
server, this causes a long delay in the boot sequence. To avoid
this, I have removed the "auto eth0" from /etc/network/interface but
that means if have to call "ifup eth0" manually each time after
booting if I am connected to a network with DHCP server. This is
somewhat annoying.
My question is, can I configure network setup so, that it tries to
set up the interface with DHCP but quickly continues when no DHCP
answer is received? In the background the DHCP client should still
try to find a DHCP server and set up everything accordingly when the
net becomes available. This probably means, that some services
which have already been started, need to be restarted or sent a HUP
so they reload config, rescan interfaces and IP addresses etc.
How is this handled, when other interfaces, like PCMCIA or USB
Ethernet cards or WLAN adapters are inserted on a running system?
- Differnet ntp servers.
- Different HTTP and FTP proxies. In the company network, I can
access outside FTP and HTTP servers only using a proxy that I have
to manually put into /etc/wgetrc and /etc/apt/apt.conf. In my home
network there is no proxy so that these config entries have to be
deleted.
The embedded system is a DHCP client, has no DNS server, etc. if
attached to the development environment. When in use in the field, it
should be able to provide DHCP, DNS, NTP, and maybe some other
services. It would be OK to change between these two modes by hand,
but this should need only one command to be called instead of editing
a couple of config files. Is the a debian package to do this in some
comfortable way?
urs
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