i have built a 13.37 box that will be used as an "appliance" (no X.) both the system board nic and a usb wireless adapter have been configured with two different ip addresses (not sure this is necessary.) it will mostly be used with the wireless adapter. but if i have to move it to the bench, i would like the wired nic to function.

in its current config, the "default" nic is wlan0 as IFNAME[0]. eth0 is IFNAME[4]. if i need to use the wired, i have to down wlan0 and up eth0.

while this manual selection works, i'm wondering if there is a way to automate. without running a gui tool like networkmanager; not running X.


thanks.

Hello, welcome to LQ.

I think that wicd (in /extra) can do that. It can be used either with (commands "wicd-client" or "wicd-gtk") or without gui (commands "wicd-cli" or "wicd-curses"), as you like, so it doesn't need that X be running.

To use it you need to undo your manual configuration of the network, i.e. put back the relevant /etc/rc.d/inet1.conf and /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless.conf in their initials states.

You could use ethtool in a boot script (eg. rc.local) to check if ethernet is plugged in.

Something like:
if ethtool eth0 | grep -q "Link detected: yes" ; then <down wlan0, up eth0> fi

HTH

Phil

i had read about wicd, but somehow missed that it has a cli interface. curses works for me so i'll give it a look.

but ethtool sounds like what i need to use (never heard of this one before.) it will be booted with only one of the two nics, so the test at boot would work. keep me from having to remember to up the wired on the few times it's needed.


this helps. thank you for the responses.