Graphical Tools - usrsbinneat and Webmin

Graphical Tools - /usr/sbin/neat and Webmin

neat is a graphical network configuration tool that you can issue from the command line with /usr/sbin/neat. This tool modifies many files when you enter configuration through it. You may choose to use the commands in the upcoming section or edit network configuration files directly, such as those covered in the previous section. If you like graphical tools; however, this is an easy interface to work with and it helps with a lot of basic networking configuration.

After invoking neat if you are running our Integrity Red Hat Advanced Server system, you see the main window shown in Figure 8-2.

Figure 8-2. Main neat Window

At this point, you can either select any of the buttons in the window or double-click one of the four devices, which opens another window. When you double-click one of the cards, the window that opens on Advanced Server is called Ethernet Device and has tabs for General, Protocols, and Routing as shown in Figure 8-3. (As a sidenote, you get different windows that open on Red Hat 8.x, but mostly the same information is viewed and edited: it just takes place in different windows.)

Figure 8-3. Hardware Device Window

Selecting Protocols and TCP/IP opens the window shown in Figure 8-4.

Figure 8-4. TCP/IP Window

In this window, you can update the Address, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway Address, and other parameters associated with the network card. You can select Hostname or Routing from the tabs on the top of the window as well.

There are different network cards in the slots on the Integrity system. If you were to click the Hardware Device button on the top of the window, we'd receive a summary of the hardware of the card eth3, as shown in Figure 8-5.

Figure 8-5. Hardware Window Showing eth0:3

The corresponding hardware devices of all four networking cards in the Integrity server are shown.

This is a great graphical tool for managing networking basics. Please keep in mind that the neat windows are slightly different on the Integrity Advanced Server than they are on Red Hat 8.x. The tool's functionality, however, is the same on both operating systems.

The Webmin tool covered next also has a Network Configuration area under Hardware. At the time of this writing, I have used Webmin on only IA-32 systems and not on Integrity servers. Figure 8-6 shows the Network Configuration area in which you can make one of four selections using Webmin.

Figure 8-6. Webmin Network Configuration

You can select from the areas shown in the figure to modify the desired functionality of your system.

The graphical tools covered in this section are by no means exhaustive. Countless Linux tools are available for working with networking. I like these tools and use them, but you may find others that suit your needs.