Hi,
I have a portable node built with a Pi4 running the ASL3 Pi image. Normally, the node is connected to a wired network that provides DHCP. This all works fine. However, I occasionally have a need to connect the node to a network where I need to set a static IP on the Pi. (Yes, I know it would be much better to set a static lease on the DHCP server so I can leave the Pi config alone. I’d do it that way if I could, believe me.)
My idea was to be able to swap network configurations via DTMF command over the air, or perhaps even wire up a couple of buttons to the Pi. I know this can be done via the nice Console GUI, but I’d like an alternate method that doesn’t require being able to access the web UI.
In the “old” days, I’d just make a script to swap /etc/network/interfaces files around and restart networking (or reboot the machine). A few lines of bash, some “cmd” entries in rpt.conf, and I’d be off to the races.
It seems that Debian 12/ASL3 has other ways of handling networking configuration now. I read the Debian wiki page on network configuration, but I’m still not able to figure out what ASL3 is doing to configure the network. I don’t see anything in /etc/network/interfaces (or the interfaces.d directory). I also don’t see anything in /etc/systemd/network/ other than two links that are pointing to /dev/null. The Debian wiki suggested that placing my static IP config in /etc/network/interfaces would override whatever configuration is active, so I tried that. It did pick up the static IP that I set as a test, but it still grabbed an address from the DHCP server, so I had two address on the same interface, with the DHCP being primary. Not what I’m looking for. The Debian wiki also says “Make sure to disable all DHCP services, e.g. dhcpcd.” The “e.g.” here isn’t very helpful; I looked for this exact service but it doesn’t seem to exist.
I’m not looking for someone to write a script for me or otherwise hold my hand here; I’m very comfortable with Asterisk/app_rpt and bash programming in general. Just looking for a hint or some place to get started. Can anyone tell me how ASL3 is handling network configuration?
Andy K8ARW