Quoth Zhenghui Xie on Mon, Sep 25, 2006 at 09:29:36AM -0700: > David Bustos ???: > >Usually, yes. Consider a user who has a service which should only run > >if there are no external interfaces, and which takes a long time to > >start up. If we boot into the only standalone profile, then we might > >start the service before NWAM has finished probing the network. If NWAM > >detects a network and switches to the networked profile, then the > >service will be disabled, but since it takes so long to start, it's > >still starting. In this case, the user will want the standalone profile > >to be separate from the boot profile, and he will want the service to be > >enabled in the former, but not the latter. ... > Assuming we have a boot profile and a separate standalone file, the > biggest question I have is that when to switch and how we can decide it. > > Usually only when the network environment changes, we switch profile. In > the above case, actually there won't be any network environment change. > Both boot profile and the separate standalone profile, represents a > standalone network environment.
The difference between boot & standalone is not a difference in network environment, but a difference in knowledege about the network environment. We always boot into the boot profile because we don't know what the network environment is like at boot (because both the network hardware isn't fully available, and NWAM is implemented in userland, which isn't fully available). Once NWAM has started and done its initial network probe, it has enough information to decide whether there is a network or not, and if there's not, it can switch to the standalone profile. David
