two network interfaces active at the same time?

[Christopher J. Bottaro]

Lucia Sanchez wrote:

> Christopher J. Bottaro wrote:

<snip>
 
>> This is what I'm going for:
>> 
>> $ route
>> Kernel IP routing table
>> Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref Use
>> Iface
>> 192.168.1.0     *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0   0   ath0
>> 192.168.2.0     *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0   0   eth0
>> default         192.168.1.1     0.0.0.0         UG    0      0   0   ath0
>> 
>> Read: "All traffic destine for 192.168.1.* goes through device ath0.  All
>> traffic destine for 192.168.2.* goes through device eth0.  All other
>> traffic defaults to using gateway 192.168.1.1 (through device ath0)."

<snip>

> The file you're looking for is /etc/network/interfaces
> 
> As usuall, before messing up with this file, make a backup.  In order to
> try out whatever changes you've made "sudo /etc/init.d/networking
> restart" should work.
> 
> Supposing the IP addresses for your interfaces are static, I suggest the
> following content for that file (change settings as appropriate):
> 
> 
> # The loopback interface
> auto lo
> iface lo inet loopback
> 
> # The first network card
> auto eth0
> iface eth0 inet static
>         address 192.168.2.2
>         netmask 255.255.255.0
>         broadcast 192.168.2.255
> 
> auto ath0
> iface ath0 inet static
>         address 192.168.1.2
>         netmask 255.255.255.0
>         broadcast 192.168.1.255
> gateway 192.168.1.1
> 
> Good luck!

Ahh, that helped a lot, thank you.  A few more questions though...

1)  What does the "auto" mean before each device name?
2)  Are there some man pages I can read about this, so I can stop bothing
you nice people?  :)
3)  ath0 is a wireless device...does that change anything?  Do the wireless
settings go in /etc/network/interfaces or somewhere else?

Hrm, some of these questions might be obvious once I start poking around
in /etc/network, but I'm currently at work and away from my Kubuntu
machine.

Also, I guess the big question is...how (or) will editing these files by
hand effect the operation of the GUI programs like wlassistant or
knetworkmanager?

Thanks again,
-- Christopher