Hello.

I am trying to write a small script that tests to see what wireless network I am connected to and automatically turning on or off samba sharing.
I want samba to be on while I'm on my own wireless network, but I want it to automatically shut off if I connect to a public network.

The best way I can figure out to do this is by running:
to see if the public network is in the list (presuming I would be connected to it.)

First question: is there a better way to find out? perhaps:
this would tell me what I'm actually connected to. I am using NetworkManager to deal with the wireless. Is there something I can query in NetworkManager to find this info?

Second question: is gksu appropriate? I want the script to run as non-root user but I want it to pop up a password dialog to shutdown samba if required. I have also heard of gksudo.

Third question: I am having trouble with running a test in the script. Here's what I have:
This seems very erratic. I have been testing it here while I am connected to that network but sometimes it shuts down samba and sometimes not. However, iwlist always finds "ESSID:"Cafe Wireless". Is this the correct use of test? or is it more for checking for actual files and whatnot.

Any help would be great.

Thanks!

Ben

I am neither a wireless nor a security expert so take the following for what it is worth.

I would think you would be better off using iwconfig since (as I understand it) it shows what access point you are actually connected to rather than what is in the area. And I would think you would want to test against your own ESSID (reversing the sense of the test). Otherwise you will still allow SAMBA sharing on other public networks. Finally, I would hope something in your SAMBA configuration itself keeps out unwanted users, since this script, by itself, seems like rather weak protection.

That said, it looks like your quotation marks in what you posted above are wrong. Were you trying to nest quotation marks? If so, you need to escape the inner quotation marks. But I don't see why you would need to nest at all.

What you are doing above is testing for presence of output from grep. That is fine (except for the points I've already made) but FWIW, the way I would probably do this is:

or, alternatively

I don't know enough to comment on your choice of gksu versus alternatives.