RC.INET1(8)

NAME
rc.inet1 - Slackware network configuration script.

DESCRIPTION
rc.inet1. This script configures network interfaces. The special case of a network device is the wireless interface.
rc.inet1 reads its configuration parameters from a file `rc.inet1.conf'. The `rc.inet1.conf' file contains a series of variable array definitions, with each array index corresponding to a single network interface.

OPTIONS
The way to start your network (the configuration of your nics and bringing the interfaces up, and creating a default route if required) is by running the command:

/etc/rc.d.rc.inet1

Restarting the whole network (all available network interfaces) is done in a similar fashion:

/etc/rc.d.rc.inet1 restart

More generically speaking, you can start/stop/restart any network interface yourself by running one of the commands:

/etc/rc.d.rc.inet1 INTERFACE_start

/etc/rc.d.rc.inet1 INTERFACE_stop

/etc/rc.d.rc.inet1 INTERFACE_restart

where `INTERFACE' is the name of an existing network interface (eth0, wlan0, ...)

WIRELESS
The script rc.wireless takes care of configuring the wireless parameters for a network interface. This script does not run independently. Instead, it is executed by the generic network configuration script rc.inet1.
If a wireless interface is detected, rc.wireless will use iwconfig , iwpriv and possibly wpa_supplicant to associate the card with an access point (in managed mode) or peer it with another computer (in ad-hoc mode), and enable an encryption modus like WPA.

FILES

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1
    network configuration script

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf
    parameter definition file (is being read by rc.inet1 and rc.wireless)

/etc/rc.d/rc.wireless
    wireless configuration script

/etc/rc.d/rc.wireless.conf
    parameter definition file ( deprecated )

DIAGNOSTICS
If you remove the executable bit from the rc.wireless script, it will never be executed. This can be beneficial if you have written your own wireless script and don't want Slackware to mess it up.

CAVEATS
The network interface definitions are stored in variable arrays. The bash shell has no facilities to retrieve the largest array index used. Therefore, the rc.inet1 script makes the assumption that array indexes stay below the value of 6. Effectively this means that you can configure up to 6 network interfaces in rc.inet1.conf by default.

If you want to configure more than six network interfaces, you will have to edit the file /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 and change the value `6' in the line:
MAXNICS=${MAXNICS:-6}
to a value that is larger than the largest index value you use.

The /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless script is not meant to be run on it's own by the user!

AUTHOR
Eric Hameleers <alien@slackware.com>

SEE ALSO
rc.inet1.conf(5), ifconfig(8), iwconfig(8), route(8)