Ubuntu Manpage: netenv - Configure your system for different network environments

NAME

       netenv - Configure your system for different network environments

SYNOPSIS

       netenv

DESCRIPTION

       netenv  is  an  interactive utility to switch between different network configurations. It
       does not accept any command line arguments.

       On Debian systems, netenv can work with both PCMCIA and on-board network  cards.  You  can
       also use netenv to configure your windowmanager or your printing environment. The new menu
       item, however, will not work under many circumstances (it might work with a PCMCIA  card).
       The full documentation is included in html format (see below).

       Note that you either have to specify the boot parameter

       NETENV=configname

       or enter the chosen environment by hand during boot time. The boot process will stop until
       you entered something. Alternatively, you can specify a timeout, after which  the  default
       configuration will be used (see below). If you want to change to the default configuration
       without waiting for the timeout, set NETENV to the hostname of your computer.

       Netenv needs the dialog binary for user interaction;  if  it  cannot  be  found,  it  will
       display an error message and exit.

       The  system  administrator  can also run netenv during normal operation.  netenv will then
       ask wether to activate the changes  by  restarting  the  networking  now.  In  this  case,
       /etc/init.d/networking restart will be executed as well as additional scripts specified in
       NETENV_RUN_INIT_SCRIPTS

CONFIGURATION

For setting up different network configurations and related configuration files like
XF86Config, see the html-Documentation.

netenv will read the file /etc/netenv/netenv.conf. You can specify the following
variables there:

ALLOW_EXPERT
If this is set to YES, you can enter "expert mode" by pressing CANCEL in the
chooser dialog. THIS IS A SECURITY RISK! Everybody with physical access to your
computer will get a ROOT SHELL without any password! Do not leave your laptop alone
when this is set to YES. This feature is disabled by default.

COLS The width of the screen used, in columns or characters. Default is 68.

NETENV_DO_RESTART
If set to yes, and netenv is called with a controlling tty (that is, interactively
by root instead of by the init script), netenv will restart the network without
asking. If set to never, it will not do this, also without asking. Otherwise you
will be asked, obviously.

NETENV_TIMEOUT
The time (in seconds) netenv will show the dialog before chosing the default
configuration. The default is 0, which means that it will wait forever.

NETENV_RUN_INIT_SCRIPTS
If the system administrator runs netenv during normal system operation and chooses
to activate the changes at once, then the init scripts specified in this variable
are called with argument restart after calling /etc/init.d/networking restart. You
can use this to notify daemons of the changed network configuration. The scripts
have to reside in /etc/init.d/ and must be specified as a space separated list,
e.g. NETENV_RUN_INIT_SCRIPTS="chrony myinitscript". Default is none.

NETENV_START_STOP_SCRIPTS
In Debian, calling an init script with the argument restart means that it will
execute itself twice, first with the argument stop, then with start. Some init
scripts, however, do more than that. Currently I am only aware of wwwoffle, which
checks its online status before and switches back to the same state after restart.
(The netenv maintainer considers this a bug, the wwwoffle maintainer a feature.) To
be able to change from offline to online, or vice versa, we have to work around
this magic. This can be done by stopping the service manually and starting it
again, and that is what is done for scripts in this variable (again a space
separated list), e.g. NETENV_START_STOP_SCRIPTS=wwwoffle (for further information,
see the html documentation).

NETENV_REMEMBER_LAST
Debian's netenv can also remember your last selection. You can enable this by
setting the variable to yes. Furthemore if you set it to default, your last
selection will be used in case of timeout (see NETENV_TIMEOUT).

Note that the default values are set in the script before /etc/netenv/netenv.conf is
sourced. Thus, environment variables cannot be used (and this doesn't make much sense
since netenv usually is not called by a user.

Some other variables are also used and could, in principle, be defined in
/etc/netenv/netenv.conf, but aren't useful. See the executable /sbin/netenv for further
information.

REPORTING BUGS

       Report  bugs  to  Gerd  Bavendiek  <bav@epost.de>,  or to the Debian Bugtracking System if
       you're using this distribution.

AUTHOR