On Fri, 2008-05-16 at 08:11 -0700, Rainer Heilke wrote:
> > > The buttons in the network admin GUI seem to be
> > > just for show.
> > 
> > Yes, they are.  They're clearly designed for an
> > operating system other
> > than Solaris, and need to be re-designed.
> > Thankfully, I think the NWAM
> > hase 1 project is planning on implementing a better
> > user interface.
> 
> rant on
> This should NEVER have been rolled into a release until it was at least
> half ready! We're trying to attract people TO OpenSolaris, not drive them
> away. If an old hand like me has trouble, how is a newcomer supposed to
> figure this out? A product (NWAM) that seems to do nothing and a GUI that
> does, in fact, do nothing but mangle files? sigh
> rant off

The NWAM feature that's currently in OpenSolaris (dubbed "NWAM Phase
0") was designed for laptops that visit networks managed via DHCP.  It
does a fairly good job of detecting wireless and wired networks, and
automatically configuring interfaces via DHCP based on a simple priority
heuristic.

If configuration needs to go beyond those capabilities, then one needs
to revert to "manual mode" (to borrow the terminology from the nwamd(1M)
man page) and use the traditional Solaris networking configuration
methods.

On its face, and IMO, this is acceptable, except that people don't know
to go read nwamd(1M) when their network configuration isn't being
applied.  It's not necessarily a problem with functionality, but rather
a problem of awareness of how the system works and how one should
interact with it.  I think the "NWAM Phase 1" project will go a long way
toward raising that awareness, making the feature more complete by
introducing a user interface, and handling a broader set of
configurations.  Of course, the NWAM team can undoubtedly do a much
better job of talking about their project, so if you have any input, I'd
suggest sending it to [EMAIL PROTECTED]

As for the Gnome network administration GUI, I'll stop at what I've
already said :-).  Again, and thankfully, I think it's being replaced
with something that is well-integrated.

http://opensolaris.org/os/project/nwam/UIDesign/Phase1/

> Thanks again for the help; it is _greatly_ appreciated.
> Rainer

Anytime,
-Seb


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