netcfg v2.5.2 - note: change in auto wireless config

This release brings a completely new auto wireless/wired configuration. The old net-auto is deprecated and no longer included. There are also some very minor configuration changes that may affect a few people.

Move to new auto-wireless/wired The new automatic connection has proper roaming support and will prove more reliable than the old setup - particularly with more complicated wireless configurations. To migrate to the new automatic wireless setup:

  1. pacman -S core/wpa_actiond
  2. Set WIRELESS_INTERFACE="" to your wireless interface in /etc/rc.conf. For example WIRELESS_INTERFACE="wlan0"
  3. Add net-auto-wireless to your DAEMONS=() array.

Note: wpa-config profiles do not work with this, convert them to wpa-configsection profiles. An example is included in /etc/network.d/examples/

The new auto-wired uses similar configuration - follow the above instructions except use the net-auto-wired daemon, and WIRED_INTERFACE configuration option.

New features:

  • net-auto-wireless/wpa_actiond - Real wireless roaming/auto connection. Based on same principle as autowifi. Requires optional dependency: wpa_actiond
  • net-auto-wired - automatic ethernet configuration. Requires optional dependency: ifplugd
  • Interface configurations - set options for all profiles using an interface
  • Output hooks
  • Internal cleanup & improvement

Internal changes:

  • Uses wpa_supplicant for all wireless configuration by default, including wep/none security. This adds improves support for most and should improve reliability.
  • Uses iproute by default for all static configuration. net_tools which contains ifconfig is effectively obsolete and hasnt seen a release for over 8 years. The 'ethernet-iproute' and 'ethernet' connection types have been merged together to simply 'ethernet'. All options are still supported and existing configurations will continue to work for both types. A symlink has been made to ensure that profiles using 'ethernet-iproute' will continue to function.

Changes in configuration syntax

  • net-auto and AUTO_NETWORKS is now deprecated in favour of net-auto-wireless/net-auto-wired.
  • wireless: If you were previously specifying the wpa_supplicant driver in WPA_OPTS, you now need to specify it in WPA_DRIVER.
  • wireless: iwconfig based configuration for wep/none can be used by changing to wep-old or none-old. This should not be necessary and is left in place only for the possibility of very old drivers that do not support wpa_supplicant.
  • ethernet-iproute: As 'ethernet' is now iproute based, those using 'ethernet-iproute' can revert the name. There is a symlink in place, so existing configurations of either name will continue to function regardless.
  • wireless-dbus: Unsupported. The wpa_supplicant dbus interface isn't particularly well documented and it doesn't fit well into the netcfg codebase. There is a symlink in place so that configurations using wireless-dbus will continue to function using the 'wireless' connection scripts.

Download: netcfg 2.5.2 is in [core].

Source: ftp://ftp.archlinux.org/other/netcfg/netcfg-2.5.2.tar.gz

PKGBUILD: In Subversion.

Documentation: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Network_Profiles

Contributors: I had a few big contributors to this release:
Jim Pryor: Many internal changes and improvements
Thomas Bächler: wpa_actiond based auto roaming/connection
Thanks guys!

Bugs: On the bug tracker as always.