MANDRAKE's FAST NETWORK TWO-STEP

Mandrake Linux has done more than polish up that old 9.1 distribution; they've added a little Network Profile number that shuffles users on and off networks with consummate elegance.

 
 
 
 
by Jack Fegreus
September 26, 2003		  
     
  The new release of Mandrake Linux 9.2 provides a number of interesting surprises. Most of the early comments pointing towards a point release that mainly corrected software bugs were not quite in step with the new performance. The new 9.2 version adds a new twist to networking that changes the feel on Mandrake Linux quite dramatically.  
         
 
OPENBENCH LABS SCENARIO
UNDER EXAMINATION
Linux as a corporate desktop

WHAT WE TESTED
Mandrake Linux 9.2 Release Candidate 2
Linux Kernel 2.4.22
KDE 3.1,3
GNOME 2.2
GCC 3.3.1
Samba 2.2.8a,
Mozilla 1.4
OpenOffice 1.1.0

KEY FINDINGS
NFS and SMB shares can be opened directly using the LAN Browser and LISa.
Mounted Samba shares will be accessible after rebooting.
 

First and foremost, the new release naturally keeps pace with the explosion of activity in Open Source projects by including the latest and greatest of all of the Open Source packages. In particular there are two standouts: Mozilla and OpenOffice. The latest release of these packages is a story in its own right. 

In the case of Mozilla 1.4, the e-mail client in the new release uses a smart Bayesian classifier to detect spam, while the Web browser provides a mechanism to suppress pop-up windows, which have joined spam in the Internet hall of shame. Together, these features make Mozilla indispensable for serious Web denizens.

In its own right, OpenOffice brings an equal leap in functionality to the traditional office productivity suite. There are two very intriguing extensions in functionality when it comes to saving—or to be exact, "exporting"—documents. The first of these extensions allows a document to be exported into a PDF document. The second extension allows slide-show presentations to be saved as an interactive Flash document for display on the Web.

 
     
 

For putting presentations on the Web, this makes all of the sense in the world. Slide transitions and object interactions are easily converted and saved as flash transformations. Slides are then smoothly and easily advanced by the Web visitor, who simply clicks on the presentation image. The scheme is ingenious in its simple elegance. OpenBench Labs will be looking at these new OpenOffice features in greater depth in an upcoming issue of Open.

  
         
 

The most visible changes in the Mandrake Linux 9.2 operating system come in the form of networking changes. The most obvious is the introduction of Network Profiles in the network configuration management module of the Drake Control Center. For systems that frequently change their network configuration—a laptop that travels between home and office or a laptop used by a consultant in the offices of many different clients—the ability to have multiple network configurations that can be interchanged at the push of a button will be a very welcome addition to Mandrake.

  
Open Reader Survey
Do you use a laptop on multiple networks? Yes No No Answer
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Do you regularly use NFS for shared volumes? Yes No No Answer
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Current Tally
 
     
 

Within the network configuration module for Mandrake Linux 9.2 is a new tab to create and store different profiles. We configured a laptop for use on our standard office LAN and on the labs test network. For our purposes this involved setting the address of the network interface and the gateway device.

For our office LAN, we set our NIC address to be dynamically determined via a DHCP server. On the labs network, we used a static address. In both the "Office" and "Labs" profiles, we set a distinct address for the Internet gateway server.

  
       
 

Once this was done, we were then able to select the applicable network profile tab in the network configuration form and easily switch back and forth between our Office and Labs profile. When we did this, the configuration of the NIC's address followed along in lockstep, or at least very nearly in lockstep. The static NIC address for the Labs profile was correctly set; however, the configuration module incorrectly reported the address as being set by DHCP, which was impossible on that network.

Unfortunately, that was all that followed in near lockstep. In our tests of Mandrake Linux 9.2 RC2, the address of the Internet gateway remained constant when the profiles were switched. As a result, switching from one network to another turned into a two-step process. First, we set the profile, which automatically set the new network address. Second, we were required to manually set the address of the Internet gateway to complete the process.

 
We set two distinct profiles on our laptop: One for the Office LAN and one for the Labs test network. We then attempted to tie the NIC's address and the corresponding Internet gateway address to each of these profiles. Changing the profile (mouse over) changed the address; however, the Internet gateway did not automatically change.
 
       
 

Operationally, the biggest change comes in the ability to now use the LAN Information Server (LISa) directly within Konqueror to access network shares. In Mandrake Linux 9.1, an explicit login to the network system was required using an application such as LinNetworkNeighborhood.

This is no longer the case with Mandrake Linux 9.2. Now it is possible to identify a share using LISa and open it directly without an explicit login.

LISa is a daemon that utilizes TCP/IP protocol stack to poll systems on the network in order to provide a list of systems. Within KDE there is a LAN Browser option, which displays the results of a LISa polling search as a list of systems in the left-hand column of the Konqueror directory window. This list contains the TCP/IP addresses of all network devices including printers and SAN switches.

  
Using LISa, users can now identify, click, and open a network share without needing to explicitly login with an application such as LinNetworkNeighborhood. What's more, using the Samba import tool in Drake Control Center (mouse over) shares can be mounted using the friendly name (NetBIOS) of the system, and an icon will be placed on the desktop which will remain permanently accessible.
 
     
 

Even when shares were configured with LinNetworkNeighborhood to retain mount points and automatically remount shares, this did not pass muster with Mandrake Linux 9.1. The mount points remained, but logging in and out of the system means having to go back and re-enter passwords to connect to the network shares. This is no longer the case with Mandrake Linux 9.2. If the wizard in the Mandrake Linux 9.2 Control Center is utilized to mount Samba shares, then on reboot the shares are immediately accessible.