                                  ifplugd 0.28

   Copyright 2002-2005 Lennart Poettering <mzvscyhtq (at) 0pointer (dot)
   de>
     * [1]License
     * [2]News
     * [3]Overview
     * [4]Current Status
     * [5]Documentation
     * [6]Requirements
     * [7]Installation
     * [8]Acknowledgements
     * [9]Download

License

   This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
   under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
   Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
   option) any later version.

   This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
   WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
   MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
   General Public License for more details.

   You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
   with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
   675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

News

   Sat Jun 4 2005:

   [10]Version 0.28 released, changes include: build fixes from Stefan
   Seyfried.

   Wed Mar 30 2005:

   [11]Version 0.27 released, changes include: new option --no-startup.

   Sun Dec 19 2004:

   [12]Version 0.26 released, changes include: changed MII code for better
   compatibility with some 3COM Boomerang cards.

   Mon May 10 2004:

   [13]Version 0.25 released, changes include: Revert to more classic link
   checking support. The new checking order is: ETHTOOL, MII, WLAN, IFF.
   The obsolete API "PRIV" is no longer checked by the automatic API
   detection code. However, you may enable it forcibly by passing -m priv
   on the command line.

   Mon Apr 12 2004:

   [14]Version 0.24 released, changes include: add IFF_RUNNING link check
   support and make it the default. This might break some setups. You may
   workaround this by passing -m to the daemon for selecting a different
   API. Please report breakages!

   Wed Apr 7 2004:

   [15]Version 0.23 released, changes include: don't make /dev/tty1 the
   controlling TTY when beeping

   Tue Feb 10 2004:

   [16]Version 0.22 released, changes include: rename ifstatus to
   ifplugstatus due to namespace collision, minor fixes

   Mon Jan 26 2004:

   [17]Version 0.21b released, added missing file.

   Mon Jan 26 2004:

   [18]Version 0.21 released, changes include: better compatibility with
   wireless devices, compatibility with newer kernels

   Sun Nov 9 2003:

   [19]Version 0.20 released, changes include: fix wrong message, build
   fix

   Mon Oct 20 2003:

   [20]Version 0.19 released, changes include: New option --wait-for-kill,
   this requires [21]libdaemon 0.3

   Fri Oct 17 2003:

   [22]Version 0.18 released, changes include: Some bugs fixed

   Fri Sep 13 2003:

   [23]Version 0.17b released, changes include: typo and date fix

   Fri Sep 13 2003:

   [24]Version 0.17 released, changes include: documentation update,
   better support for multiple interfaces, gcc 2.95 build fix

   Thu Aug 13 2003:

   [25]Version 0.16 released, changes include: RPM spec file added, build
   fixes, WLAN improvements (including compatibility with the upcoming
   waproamd, a WLAN roaming daemon), monitor mode for use in conjunction
   with PCMCIA devices, better support for multiple interface setups,
   SUPPORTED_DRIVERS returns

   Thu July 10 2003:

   [26]Version 0.15 released, changes include: bad umask fix,
   documentation update

   Mon July 7 2003:

   [27]Version 0.14 released, changes include: autoconf usage, new
   dependency [28]libdaemon, wireless LAN support, support for
   suspending/resuming, many fixes

Overview

   ifplugd is a Linux daemon which will automatically configure your
   ethernet device when a cable is plugged in and automatically
   unconfigure it if the cable is pulled. This is useful on laptops with
   onboard network adapters, since it will only configure the interface
   when a cable is really connected.

   ifplugd ifplugd interfaces with your distribution's native network
   configuration utilities.

   Some features:
     * Uses your distribution's native ifup/ifdown programs.
     * May beep when the cable is unplugged, plugged, the interface
       configuration succeeded or failed.
     * Supports the Linux SIOCETHTOOL (newer, aka ethtool API),
       SIOCGMIIREG (older, aka mii-diag/mii-tool API) and SIOCDEVPRIVATE
       (oldest, aka mii-tool API) ioctl()s for getting link status.
       Release 0.24 introduces support for link detection with the
       IFF_RUNNING interface flag.
     * Syslog support
     * Small program - the binary is just 25 KB (plus 16 KB for
       libdaemon).
     * Multiple ethernet interface support
     * Can be configured to ignore short "unplugged" periods (-d option)
       or short "plugged" periods(-u option)
     * Support for wireless networking. Whenever an association to an AP
       is detected the network is configured. Have a look on [29]waproamd
       if you need a facility to configure WEP keys before AP associations
       succeed.
     * Compatibility mode for network devices which do not support cable
       detection (-F option)

Current Status

   Version 0.28 is stable and has all the sensible features its users
   could think of.

Documentation

   Have a look on the man pages [30]ifplugd(8), [31]ifplugstatus(8),
   [32]ifplugd.conf(5). (An XSLT capable browser is required)

  Configuration

   Edit /etc/ifplugd/ifplugd.conf for configuration changes. This file is
   a bourne shell script sourced by the init script and used to start
   ifplugd with appropriate arguments. You may specify more than one
   ethernet interface in INTERFACES. For each interface a seperate
   instance of ifplugd is spawned. The arguments specified in ARGS are
   append to ifplugd's command line. Have a look on ifplugd -h or man
   ifplugd for further information about the available options.

   The network interface which is controlled by ifplugd should not be
   configured automatically by your distribution's network subsystem,
   since ifplugd will do this for you if needed.

   On Debian systems, any interfaces named in ifplugd's INTERFACES
   environment variable should not also be listed in an "auto" stanza in
   /etc/network/interfaces.

  Troubleshooting

   When you are using the hotplug subsystem (Debian package hotplug) you
   may notice that the network device is configured even when it is not
   listed on an auto line in /etc/network/interface. This may be due to
   hotplug being configured to ifup the network interface when it becomes
   available. This was the default behavior in the Debian hotplug package
   prior to release 0.0.20030117-1, for example. To prevent this you
   should either upgrade your hotplug package or comment out the ifup call
   in /etc/hotplug/net.agent.

   When using ifplugd together with APM (and probably ACPI) suspends,
   strange things may happen: some network devices fail to detect the
   network cable for a short period of time before and after the suspend.
   When using the -f switch, this will be treated as "no link beat", thus
   the network is shutdown after a timeout. During this timeout the
   machine changes to suspended state. When it is resumed again, the
   timeout period will have expired and so the network is deconfigured,
   however, as the next cable detection succeeds, the network is
   configured again immediately. To fix this problem, ifplugd should be
   disabled before the APM suspend and enabled back after the suspend.
   This may be done by using apmd and adding a script to
   /etc/apm/{suspend,resume}.d which simply calls /etc/init.d/ifplugd
   suspend, resp. /etc/init.d/ifplugd resume. It might even be a good idea
   to shut down the network completely during suspend, this may be
   achieved by calling /etc/init.d/ifplugd stop and /etc/init.d/ifplugd
   start in the appropriate places. I strongly urge the packagers of this
   software for the Linux distributions to add such scripts to their
   packages.

  FAQ

    1. Q: I want to use ifplugd with my PCMCIA device, but ifplugd quits
       when it doesn't find eth0, when I have not inserted the card. What
       can I do?
       A: Use the -f switch. This is not very clean however, since
       modprobe is called on each cable detection query of ifplugd to load
       a module for the network device. This is suboptimal. You should
       probably run ifplugd only when the card is really inserted.
    2. Q: I am using the -f switch, but the kernel logs are getting filled
       with messages like "modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module eth0".
       What can I do?
       A: Make sure you have a line like alias eth0 off in your
       /etc/modules.conf
    3. Q: When the cable is unplugged and the interface shut down it is
       still available with ifconfig and markes as UP. Why this?
       A: ifplugd cannot detect the link beat with a shut down interface
       on certain (most as of kernel 2.4.19) network drivers. Thus ifplugd
       enables the interface before querying the link status. This may be
       switched off with -a flag. You might want to use it if you have a
       sane network driver (e.g. eepro100). The subdirectory patches/ in
       the ifplugd distribution includes a patch for the 8139too 0.9.26
       driver, which makes the driver compatible with -a. Don't ask me how
       to apply this patch. If you don't know, you won't need it.
    4. Q: Does it work with anything else than plain ethernet or wireless
       LAN?
       A: Certainly not, since the MII and ETHTOOL ioctl()s and the
       wireless extension don't exist on other network device types.
    5. Q: I have a Realtek 8139 based network card. Everytime ifplugd
       starts on bootup my machine freezes. What can I do?
       A: This is a bug in the 8139too driver 0.9.25 (at least) shipped
       with Linux 2.4.19, please upgrade to 8139too 0.9.26 (Linux 2.4.20
       or seperately at [33]http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/gkernel/).
    6. Q: There are already laptop-net's ifd and miid, why did you write
       your own daemon?
       A: laptop-net was too integrated with its profile system and didn't
       work on my hardware when I had a look on it. It seemed easier to me
       to write a simple but feature complete replacement than using
       laptop-net without most of the special features disabled. I didn't
       know about miid when I wrote ifplugd, but in any case ifplugd is
       much better than miid. For a comparison of miid and ifplugd, have a
       look on
       [34]http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=162763&repeatm
       erged=yes
    7. Q: I have two interfaces (e.g. WLAN and copper ethernet), both
       controlled by ifplugd, and want to force the network traffic to go
       over the faster one of them, in case both are available at the same
       time. How can I do this?
       A: A tool I wrote called [35]ifmetric might be exactly what you're
       looking for.

Requirements

   A newer Linux Kernel (I think 2.2 is good enough, alltough I tested it
   only with 2.4) with a compatible device driver and ethernet card. Most
   modern cards and drivers are compatible, like mine which works with the
   8139too driver.

   ifplugd was developed and tested on Debian GNU/Linux "testing" from
   July 2003, it should work on most other Linux distributions (and maybe
   Unix versions) since it uses GNU autoconf and GNU libtool for source
   code configuration and shared library management.

   The machine used was a Medion 9580-F laptop with a Realtek 8139 network
   card and a PRISM1 PCMCIA wireless LAN card.

   ifplugd needs [36]libdaemon.

Installation

   As this package is made with the GNU autotools you should run
   ./configure inside the distribution directory for configuring the
   source tree. After that you should run make for compilation and make
   install (as root) for installation of ifplugd.

   The installation scripts create an init script in
   ${sysconfdir}/init.d/ifplugd, however no /etc/rc?.d/ links are created
   for it.

   Extensive installation instructions for installation of ifplugd on
   Fedora Core 1 are available at [37]Geoff Ericksson's web site.

Acknowledgements

   For the developers of mii-diag, ethtool and laptop-net, since I looked
   on their source codes for learning how to use the link beat ioctls.

   Oliver Kurth for packaging ifplugd for Debian and ifplugd's manpage

   Stefan Seyfried, Thomas Hood, Asgeir Nilsen, Sean Reifschneider, R.
   Steve McKown, David Mitchell, Norbert Preining, Herbert Graeber for
   patches

   Frederic Lepied for integrating ifplugd into Mandrake Linux

Download

   The newest release is always available from
   [38]http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/

   The current release is [39]0.28

   Get ifplugd's development sources from the [40]Subversion
   [41]repository ([42]viewcvs):
svn checkout svn://seth.intheinter.net/ifplugd/trunk ifplugd

   You may find an up to date Debian package of ifplugd on the [43]Debian
   package repository.

   ifplugd is nowadays included in many popular distributions (Mandrake,
   Gentoo, Suse, Debian, Ubuntu); [44]Conectiva packages are available
   courtesy of Gonzalo Nemmi. Fedora Core packages are available from
   [45]Dag Wieers.

   If you want to be notified whenever I release a new version of this
   software use the subscription feature of [46]Freshmeat.

   New! There is a joint ifplugd and waproamd [47]mailing list available.
     __________________________________________________________________


    Lennart Poettering <mzvscyhtq (at) 0pointer (dot) de>, June 2005

   $Id: README.html.in 124 2005-06-04 19:22:59Z lennart $

References

   1. file:///home/iurt/rpmbuild/BUILD/ifplugd-0.28/doc/README.html#license
   2. file:///home/iurt/rpmbuild/BUILD/ifplugd-0.28/doc/README.html#news
   3. file:///home/iurt/rpmbuild/BUILD/ifplugd-0.28/doc/README.html#overview
   4. file:///home/iurt/rpmbuild/BUILD/ifplugd-0.28/doc/README.html#status
   5. file:///home/iurt/rpmbuild/BUILD/ifplugd-0.28/doc/README.html#documentation
   6. file:///home/iurt/rpmbuild/BUILD/ifplugd-0.28/doc/README.html#requirements
   7. file:///home/iurt/rpmbuild/BUILD/ifplugd-0.28/doc/README.html#installation
   8. file:///home/iurt/rpmbuild/BUILD/ifplugd-0.28/doc/README.html#acks
   9. file:///home/iurt/rpmbuild/BUILD/ifplugd-0.28/doc/README.html#download
  10. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.27.tar.gz
  11. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.27.tar.gz
  12. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.26.tar.gz
  13. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.25.tar.gz
  14. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.24.tar.gz
  15. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.23.tar.gz
  16. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.22.tar.gz
  17. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.21b.tar.gz
  18. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.21.tar.gz
  19. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.20.tar.gz
  20. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.19.tar.gz
  21. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libdaemon/
  22. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.18.tar.gz
  23. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.17b.tar.gz
  24. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.17.tar.gz
  25. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.16.tar.gz
  26. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.15.tar.gz
  27. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.14.tar.gz
  28. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libdaemon/
  29. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/waproamd/
  30. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd.8.xml
  31. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugstatus.8.xml
  32. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd.conf.5.xml
  33. http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/gkernel/
  34. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=162763&repeatmerged=yes
  35. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifmetric/
  36. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libdaemon/
  37. http://www.acmc.uq.edu.au/~gbe/linux/installation_of_ifplugd.html
  38. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/
  39. http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ifplugd-0.28.tar.gz
  40. http://subversion.tigris.org/
  41. svn://seth.intheinter.net/ifplugd
  42. http://0pointer.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/?root=ifplugd
  43. http://packages.debian.org/ifplugd
  44. http://www.linuxdicas.com.ar/caleb/rpm
  45. http://dag.wieers.com/packages/ifplugd/
  46. http://freshmeat.net/projects/ifplugd/
  47. https://seth.intheinter.net/mailman/listinfo/ifplugd-discuss
