Going portable-couple of laptop questions.

Fenster

This is mostly concerning networking on a laptop, while portable. At home, its not something I worry about, as I have my laptop plugged into my broadband connection.

On the move, however, I find that Linux gets "grumpy" if I don't have a network connection. It frequently hangs on launching network-related services (NTP and Shorewall) if I don't have a network connection to the laptop. What I want to do is make a startup script along these lines "if there's no network connections, stop these services", but I'm unsure about how to go about it, as I'm weak on shell-scripting.

Next, I want to use dialup while out and about with my laptop. Has anyone here experience with using dialup scripts?

Cheers!

declan_lgs

Fenster wrote:

Next, I want to use dialup while out and about with my laptop. Has anyone here experience with using dialup scripts?

Yes, but unless you're using ISDN like me, you might not need a script. Try KPPP if you use KDE, and wvdial works well too (no GUI, but I'm sure there's probably frontends about).

Fenster

I'm a Fluxbox user, and I'd rather not use KDE apps, as they tend to launch a lot of other crap behind the scenes and be sluggish besides. I'll search around for those other programs, though.

declan_lgs

wvdial (freshmeat).
I'm not a KDE user anymore, but when I was I used KPPP to connect with my 56k modem. It's good but only if you use KDE.

nadir

wvdial or minicom

scojones

I used wvdial for a few years, the config is easy to setup too. I third this application.

tomk

Fenster wrote:

What I want to do is make a startup script along these lines "if there's no network connections, stop these services", but I'm unsure about how to go about it, as I'm weak on shell-scripting.

Not my forte either, that bash stuff, but you might like to have a look at ifplugd - it should do some of what you're looking for anyway.

niallb

I've got scripts for most providers - ISDN and analogue -
if you need a hand.

If you only use one provider, wvdialconf will probably
give you as good results as anything.

What I usually do with a laptop is set up different runlevels:
I use 4 as no home network (so no NIS or NFS get started,
and I can actually use the laptop elsewhere).

You could copy your normal startup files to /etc/rc4.d,
change the services you want to run in the absence of a network
connection, and just call telinit 4.

You can of course use that as your action when your other script
finds that there's no network connection. It should make that simpler.

If it's only a check at startup, you could assume for now that you'll
be there, and use the different runlevel to allow you add a menu item
to Grub or Lilo for "No Network".

NiallB