From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4.2) Gecko/20040301 Description of problem: When running redhat-config-network in TTY mode, the user is told they should not run the tool, and should either start X or ssh in from another machine and use X forwarding. However, the option to run anyway is available. Not having a user-friendly text-mode tool for network configuration is poor. In a campuswide computing environment (particularly one with a lot of laptops, where X often will not work on the first try), walking novice users through ssh/X11 forwarding is unacceptable, as is walking them through ifconfig commands. What are the issues preventing redhat-config-network-tui from working - I realize it lacks full functionality, but can it be made acceptable for bares bones configuration of an interface (namely: hostname, gateway, netmask, ip address, DNS servers, and DNS search path)? Additionally, the old "netconfig" program is still present, in the "netconfig" package (netconfig-0.8.19-1). Should users still be using this? It's not present in the Component list, which leads me to believe it shouldn't exist. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): redhat-config-network-1.2.60-1 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Login to a TTY session. 2. Run redhat-config-network. 3. See the error message. Actual Results: I got the message telling me to go use SSH/X11 forwarding. Expected Results: Users should be able to run a tty-mode network configuration tool without having to jump through hoops. Additional info:
I'm the designated "Platform Coordinator" at MIT for the campus wide rollout and support of Red Hat Enterprise. It is important that people using Red Hat at MIT get a fully supportable network configuration tool. It makes sense to me that, as a temporary situation, a GUI-only network configuration system is supported. Longer term, TTY AND GUI are required. Other competing Linux distributions get this right, and improving the situation should not require a lot of effort. -wdc RHE Platform Coordinator at MIT
I would like to add a comment about the obvious catch-22 situation the tui is asking of the user. How is someone supposed to ssh into a system to run the network config tool if the reason why they want to run the tool in the first place is because the current network config is broken and they need to fix it??? Also, it has been more than 1 year and no one from RedHat has even made a comment. ~Jason
I was doing some network configuring of a Laptop last month, and used system-config-network-tui under RHEL 4 U1. I am happy to report that a TTY interface ran rather than saying "Use X" so we have DEFINITELY made progress. There are two disappointments: 1. That Red Hat had insufficient resources to follow up with this bug report and announce the progress. 2. More importantly, its a disappointment that the tui functionality is a RATHER circumscribed subset of functionality available via the gui. QUESTION: What is the long term plan for system-config-network-tui? -wdc Linux Platform Coodinator at MIT
Well, encourage the community to send patches :)
This bug is filed against RHEL 3, which is in maintenance phase. During the maintenance phase, only security errata and select mission critical bug fixes will be released for enterprise products. Since this bug does not meet that criteria, it is now being closed. For more information of the RHEL errata support policy, please visit: http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/errata/ If you feel this bug is indeed mission critical, please contact your support representative. You may be asked to provide detailed information on how this bug is affecting you.
Here was an opportunity to say, "WE FIXED THIS!" But instead, the ticket just sat, ignored, for two years, and then got closed out by what is obviously a script that just goes and bulk-closes anything labeled RHEL 3. Way to go Red Hat. Good job encouraging people to take the time to report bugs. If anybody cares, under RHEL 5, the command is now called system-config-network-tui and it seems to start up and run just fine.