[Soc-coordination] Report 5/6 - Improve Debian-Installer network setup

[Sorina - Gabriela Sandu]

Hello!

This is my final report for Improving Network Configurations on Debian
Installer.


What I’ve done recently:

I’ve mostly worked on people/sorina/write_config [1] branch recently,
here’s what I’ve done there:

- Wrote a patch for the netcfg related part in #682737 [2], to make
writing configs for the wireless interface in /etc/network/interfaces
optional. Added a new question with a medium priority for this which
defaults to "false".

- Since the configs are not saved in /etc/network/interfaces anymore,
an option to keep them and make autoconnection to the wireless network
used during install possible should be provided. For this, I added
support for netcfg to save the configuration as a Network Manager
config file, and copy it to the base system through the finish-install
script if Network Manager is installed. Getting the config relies on
netcfg global variables, which are set proper during the whole config
process, and it’s only called when netcfg finished configuring
everything. At the beginning, I’ve worked on github [3], in order to
keep the new part separated and test it outside the installer, and
after that I’ve integrated all my changes in the write_config branch
[1].

Other than this, I’ve written a small patch to check if the netmask
provided by the user is valid. I’ve noticed that netcfg only checked
if the address provided for netmask is in a x.x.x.x form, but it
doesn’t actually check if its a valid netmask. The changes can be
found here [4].


GSoC Project Overview:

In the first part of the project, I have added support to scan the
wireless network interface and provide a list of available wireless
networks instead of asking for one. Afterwards, I have added support
for netcfg to write configuration files in Network Manager’s format,
in order to keep the configs used while installing after the
installation process is complete. Furthermore, I have worked on some
of the netcfg bugs, mostly wishlist items but also normal bugs.


[1] http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=d-i/netcfg.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/people/sorina/write_config
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=682737
[3] https://github.com/sorinasandu/testing/tree/master/nm-testing
[4] http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=d-i/netcfg.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/people/sorina/check_netmask

Sorina