Description of problem: I've been trying to use profiles in 'neat' and they just waste my time because the app is so buggy... one glaring issue is that all the profiles in /etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles use HARD LINKS and when changes to ONE profile's interface are made, those changes OVERWRITE THAT SAME INTERFACE IN ALL PROFILES. Delete an interface in ONE profile, and it gets NUKED in ALL profiles. Try using symlinks. read the symlinks to generate another column in the neat display...so that you know what you're inheriting from... when the current profile's interface is modified, break the upstream link by replacing the link (instead of just writing to it!!!)...also ask if downstream links should be broken as well. USE CASE: starting in common, copy profile & rename it to foo. all of the files in profiles/foo ( these steps are equivalent to 'mkdir foo ; cd foo ; ln -s ../common/* .') now make bar in the same way... bar's files are links to ../foo/* select foo now edit eth0 and foo/ifcfg-eth0 becomes a regular file. common/ifcfg-eth0 is unchanged. bar/ifcfg-eth0 remains a link to ../foo/ifcfg-eth0 unless the user, when queried, asks to break the dependency, in which case it retains the old value of foo's eth0 settings. -- stig
>> one glaring issue is that all the profiles in /etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles use HARD LINKS and when changes to ONE profile's interface are made, those changes OVERWRITE THAT SAME INTERFACE IN ALL PROFILES. Delete an interface in ONE profile, and it gets NUKED in ALL profiles. << That is intended... if you want different settings for e.g. eth0 create a new device or copy the existing one and activate this one only in your preffered profile..