n0 netw0rk manager

I’ve just finished my own ‘network manager’ (called n0 or nNull) using Qt 4.x with a server and a client communicating via dbus. Here are some screenshots:

I will release the source code along the terms of the GPLv3 in the coming days.

Let’s see how it works: similar to the official ‘network manager’ there is a tray icon. In the case of ‘n0’ or ‘nNull’ there is just a collection of scripts listed. These scripts are handwritten by me and usually work great for my setups. If I want to change the wireless network it gets problematic since i have to edit wpa_supplicant.conf or use wpa_cli. Anyway I can live with that. Here is such a script:

#!/bin/bash -v
killall dhcpcd
if [ -f /var/run/dhcpcd-ath0.pid ]; then
rm /var/run/dhcpcd-ath0.pid
fi
killall wpa_supplicant
killall vpnc
ifconfig br0 down
ifconfig ath0 down
ifconfig eth0 down
brctl delif br0 ath0
brctl delif br0 eth0
brctl delbr br0
ip l set vbox0 down
brctl delbr vbox0
brctl addbr vbox0
ip l set vbox0 up
ip a a 10.0.2.10/24 dev vbox0
rmmod ath5k
modprobe ath5k
#iw reg set DE
sleep 1
ifconfig ath0 up
wpa_supplicant -dd -D wext -i ath0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf > /root/config/logs/abc-stdout 2> /root/config/logs/abc-stderr &
route del default
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o ath0 -j MASQUERADE
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
ethtool -s eth0 speed 100
dhcpcd ath0
#dhclient ath0
cp /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.dnsmasq
echo "nameserver 127.0.0.1" > /etc/resolv.conf
ifconfig eth0 10.0.0.1/24 up
dhcpd eth0

The bonus point is that I get a full blown log of the script execution since it uses “#!/bin/bash -v” which is quite verbose. In the near future i might add another debug line to monitor each process started by the network script. This way one could redirect all outputs to the graphical widget with different coloring for example.

I use dbus to execute scripts. For example when I want to connect to one of the two networks I’m frequently using I usually press Fn+F9 for the first network and Fn+F10 for the second network. These shortcuts are defined by /etc/acpi/default.sh and** **execute this command:

exec qdbus --system de.lastlog.nmInterface /MainApplication executeConfiguration /root/config/internetlab-ath0

This way the local ‘server backend’ uses dbus to log the output to the attached gui process as seen above. No more ‘hidden script’ action. This system is not perfect but it’s a good starting point for me for doing further experimentation.