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Roaming network profiles for laptops with Quickswitch

Every Laptop user knows what I am talking about by saying that switching network profiles is a real problem and hard to keep track of when doing it manually. This is where Quickswitch comes in. Quickswitch is a utility that not only makes laptop users' everyday life easier by letting them create and use roaming network profiles, but it also has built-in support for multiple network cards, wireless LAN configurations, different kernel parameters, support for X configurations, Netscape preferences, Samba shares and so on and so forth.

Sounds good? Want to learn how to use it? Read on:

Installing Quickswitch

Use your distribution's install program to install Quickswitch.

Now we need to tell quickswitch about all the network settings we want to be able to switch to. Quickswitch can be configured using the configuration file - /etc/quickswitch/switchto.conf. There is also a sample configuration in /etc/quickswitch/switchto.conf.sample.

Code Listing 1: Setting up the quickswitch configuration in /etc/quickswitch/switchto.conf

// # This is the default configuration:  
[config]  
device=eth0  
// # Path to save last known good configuration...  
servicefilename=/etc/quickswitch/switchto.last  
  
// # This is our profile called "home":  
[home]  
description=home  
address=192.168.0.25  
netmask=255.255.255.0  
gateway=192.168.0.1  
dns1=195.62.99.42  
dns2=195.62.97.177  
  
// # This is our profile called "work":  
[work]  
description=work  
address=10.16.3.114  
netmask=255.255.255.0  
gateway=10.16.3.249  
dns1=195.62.99.42

We are finished with the configuration now. Let's test if it works.

Code Listing 2: Using switchto to switch to another profile

// Switch to "work" profile:  
# switchto work  
// Switch to "home" profile:  
# switchto home

Use ifconfig and route to make sure that switchto correctly applied the settings the first time. Everythings ok? Well done!

Quickswitch offers two more ways of how to switch your profile.

switcher is a simple curses based GUI to switch between your profiles.

TraySwitcher is a more sophisticated Gnome tray applet.

To learn how Quickswitch easily lets you create profiles that also switch Samba, X configurations and even more. Take a look at the well documented /etc/quickswitch/switchto.conf.sample sample configuration file and visit the Quickswitch project homepage.

From: http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20040927-newsletter.xml