From: Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk>
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Sent: Sunday, June 1, 2014 9:15 PM
Subject: Re: Post-installation: how to auto-configure network adapter (ie. enable internet access)?
> If you have GNOME you'd be as well using the software it provides, Network Manager. Otherwise there is interfaces(5) (man interfaces). It has
> oodles of examples to look at.
Did you mean that at the console, tty1, I type the following command?
sudo apt-get install network-manager
The installed NetworkManager package will auto-configure my laptop computer for me?
By the way I have a thorough look at "man interfaces". It contains heaps of commands and options but no examples for beginners on how to use them.
To illustrate what I mean, see the first few paragraphs after I type "man interfaces":
[quote]
INTERFACES(5) File formats INTERFACES(5)
NAME
/etc/network/interfaces - network interface configuration for ifup and
ifdown
DESCRIPTION
/etc/network/interfaces contains network interface configuration infor‐
mation for the ifup(8) and ifdown(8) commands. This is where you con‐
figure how your system is connected to the network.
Lines starting with `#' are ignored. Note that end-of-line comments are
NOT supported, comments must be on a line of their own.
A line may be extended across multiple lines by making the last charac‐
ter a backslash.
The file
consists of zero or more "iface", "mapping", "auto", "allow-"
and "source" stanzas. Here is an example.
auto lo eth0
allow-hotplug eth1
iface lo inet loopback
source interfaces.d/machine-dependent
mapping eth0
script /usr/local/sbin/map-scheme
map HOME eth0-home
map WORK
eth0-work
iface eth0-home inet static
address 192.168.1.1
netmask 255.255.255.0
up flush-mail
iface eth0-work inet dhcp
Lines beginning with the word "auto" are used to identify the physical
interfaces to be brought up when ifup is run with the -a option. (This
option is used by the system boot scripts.) Physical
interface names
should follow the word "auto" on the same line. There can be multiple
"auto" stanzas. ifup brings the named interfaces up in the order
listed.
Lines beginning with "allow-" are used to identify interfaces that
should be brought up automatically by various subsytems. This may be
done using a command such as "ifup --allow=hotplug eth0 eth1", which
will only bring up eth0 or eth1 if it is
listed in an "allow-hotplug"
line. Note that "allow-auto" and "auto" are synonyms.
Lines beginning with "source" are used to include stanzas from other
files, so configuration can be split into many files. The word "source"
is followed by the path of file to be sourced. Shell wildcards can be
used. (See wordexp(3) for details.)
Stanzas beginning with the word "mapping" are used to determine how a
logical interface name is chosen for a physical interface that is to
be
brought up. The first line of a mapping stanza consists of the word
"mapping" followed by a pattern in shell glob syntax. Each mapping
stanza must contain a script definition. The named script is run with
the physical interface name as its argument and with the contents of
all following "map" lines (without the leading "map") in the stanza
provided to it on its standard input. The script must print a string on
its standard output
before exiting. See /usr/share/doc/ifupdown/exam‐
ples for examples of what the script must print.
Mapping a name consists of searching the remaining mapping patterns and
running the script corresponding to the first match; the script outputs
the name to which the original is mapped.
ifup is normally given a physical interface name as its first
non-option argument. ifup also uses this name as the initial logical
name for the
interface unless it is accompanied by a suffix of the
form =LOGICAL, in which case ifup chooses LOGICAL as the initial logi‐
cal name for the interface. It then maps this name, possibly more than
once according to successive mapping specifications, until no further
mappings are possible. If the resulting name is the name of some
defined logical interface then ifup attempts to bring up the physical
interface as that logical interface. Otherwise ifup exits with an
error.
Stanzas defining logical interfaces start with a line consisting of the
word "iface" followed by the name of the logical interface. In simple
configurations without mapping stanzas this name should simply be the
name of the physical interface to which it is to be applied. (The
default mapping script is, in effect, the echo command.) The interface
name is followed by the name of the address family that the interface...
[end quote]
What do the terms "iface", "mapping", "allow-hotplug eth1", "iface lo inet loopback", "up flush-mail" mean?
Brian, not everyone has a computer science or IT degree.