[Tinkerphones] default for Debian /etc/network/interfaces

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Hi Jonas,

> Am 23.02.2017 um 14:33 schrieb Jonas Smedegaard <jonas at jones.dk>:
> 
> Quoting H. Nikolaus Schaller (2017-02-23 13:58:23)
>> Hi Jonas,
>> despite the production issues I am working a little on improving
>> our Debian default rootfs for the GTA04.
>> 
>> I just found out recently that there is a rarely known capability
>> to define /etc/network/interfaces.d/* files which can be sourced
>> by the master /e/n/i.
>> 
>> This would solve the issue that we do a hard overwrite of /e/n/i
>> to configure the usb0 ethernet gadget and real ethernet on boards
>> which have hardware (BeagleBoard XM, PandaBoard, OMAP5EVM) right
>> after building the debootstrap.
>> 
>> Instead, we could just add specific config files for the 2 or 3
>> interfaces we have in our letux devices with low risk of overwriting
>> anything else. And if they interfere they can easily be removed.
>> 
>> But I could not find the default version of /e/n/i installed
>> during debootstrap to check if it really sources the eni.d.
>> Debian Packages search (on the web) shows no package where it is contained.
>> 
>> So how is this file created during debootstrap?
> 
> I believe debootstrap does *not* create the file /etc/network/interfaces
> - like hosts.conf and a few other core files it need manual creation if
> not using debian-installer.

Ah, ok. I see. Maybe I have to find out by experiment... It shouldn't be
difficult to debootstrap a new system on the GTA04 (I think I already have
a script for this).

> 
> Also, I believe that file is only used for _some_ networking frameworks.
> 
>  * ifupdown: uses /e/n/i and /etc/network/interfaces.d/*.d
>  * network-manager: briefly checks /e/n/i for interfaces to ignore.
>  * connman: possibly ignores /e/n/i completely
>  * systemd-networkd: possibly ignores /e/n/i completely
>  * ifupdown2: probably uses /e/n/i - claims to replace ifupdown...
>  * netscript-2.4: not sure - claims to replace ifupdown...
>  * wicd: not sure...
>  * waagent: irrelevant for phones...

Interesting.

> 
> ifupdown was used by default in the past, but no more.

Well, it looks as if the easy-to-understand packages and functions
are becoming more and more obsolete... The downside of all the
new functions is that they may be better but are worse documented
by google search... I.e. you find a lot of examples for the old
things but rarely a howto or example for the new ones.

And my main goal is to get a simple working setup which does not
make too many assumptions about GUI capabilities of the device (I
am quite sure that e.g. wicd can't be operated on the small touch
screen).

Many thanks for this background info! Let's see what to make out
of it.

BR and thanks,
Nikolaus

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