non-busybox dhcp clients (was: PATCH: ifupdown.c, udhcpc, and standalone shell)

[Eric Spakman]

Hi Gabriel,

>Hell Gabriel,
>
That should have been hello.... Sorry, typing on a PDA is a crime...

>>Paul Fox <pgf at brightstareng.com> wrote:
>>> i must be missing something.  couldn't which client to use simply
>>> be made configurable?  either at busybox build time, or at runtime?
>>> i understand why on a "real" system, to make it overly
>>> user-friendly that ifup might try multiple clients until one
>>> succeeds.  but surely in busybox the ifup command could honor another
>>> config file keyword, or a commandline argument, or an environment
>>> variable, or whatever, to specify the command.  and, of course,
>>> default to udhcpc.
>>
>>If you allowed the user to specify which dhcp client ifup should use,
>>you'd pretty much have to specify the whole command (since different
>>dhcp clients take different command-line arguments). Right now, we
>>have that in CVS (dhcp-start-cmd and dhcp-stop-cmd).
>>
>>Eric pointed out that this is really not DHCP anymore, it's more of a
>>generic 'run this command to bring up the interface' mechanism. And
>>that Debian's original ifupdown already had that, and it was called
>>'manual' -- i.e., manually specify how the interface should be handled
>>by ifupdown.
>>
>>So, we want the following (anybody correct me if I got this wrong):
>>
>>	- automatically do the right thing (just work) when we specify
>>	  a known interface type (static, dhcp, ppp, etc.)
>>
>>	- allow for a generic mechanism to bring up an interface via
>>	  a user-specified command ('manual' type, to be implemented)
>>
>>	- for the well-known types:
>>
>>		a) if busybox offers a client, use only that, and
>>		   expect people to use 'manual' if they want their
>>		   own alternative clients
>>
>>		b) if busybox does not offer a client, have ifupdown
>>		   try the most popular client names in some sort of
>>		   sequence. Once busybox does start offer a client,
>>		   move to option a) above.
>>
>>I suppose what's happening here is that 'dhcp' is in the process of
>>being migrated from b) to a)  :)
>>
>>Does that sound reasonable ?
>>
>Sorry for the late reply, I was away for a few days.
>
>Sound like a very good idea. Use udhcp when compiled in busybox and 
>use a list of clients when not. 
>But please don't mark option b) as obsolete. Why not keep the option 
>to choose a different client for people who don't like udhcp (like me).
>
>>Thanks,
>>Gabriel
>
>Eric
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