Cada interfaz de red de un sistema Mageia se configura inicialmente mediante 6 parámetros. Esto se corresponde con lo que espera un usuario de un ordenador de escritorio, pero tal vez no sea adecuado cuando el sistema se mueve a través de varios entornos: tener el sistema corriendo en distintos entornos de red requerirá que múltiples configuraciones coexista para un dispositivo dado - o dicho de otra manera, la interfaz se tendrá que reconfigurar cada vez que la red cambie.
Linux proporciona soporte para múltiples configuraciones de red de forma estándard. La noció de un "perfil de red" se refiere al conjunto de configuraciones de los dispostivos de red dadas para una red concreta. Cada perfil de red tiene un "nombre" - la configuración inicial que surge del sistea lleva el nombre "por defecto"; cuando un nuevo perfil se crea, se ha de especificar un nombre que sea diferente de los ya existentes.
Draknetprofile es un componente muy simple del Centro de Control de Mageia (MCC), que proporciona una interfaz gráfica de usuario (GUI) para administrar perfiles. Esta GUI permite
cambiar entre perfiles, es decir, activar un perfil deseado para que sea el "perfil actual",
crear un nuevo perfil adicional,
borrar un perfil de la lista de perfiles.
Definir y modificar perfiles afecta al sistema Linux completo y a todos sus usuarios. Ejecutar draknetprofile requiere privilegios de superusuario. Normalmente, se lanza desde dentro de MCC, que ya se ejecuta como root:

Figura 1: Centro de Control de Mageia: pestaña Red & Internet
Lanza MCC pulsando su icono en uno de los panele del escritorio,
selecciona la pestaña "Red & Internet",
hit "Manage different network profiles" in the "Personalize and Secure your network" Section (solid red contour in Figure 1).
Draknetprofile can also be launched by a command-line instruction from a terminal emulator with root privileges (this may be helpful when standard-output or error-output from draknetprofile needs to be consulted - for instance for debugging). Simply type:
draknetprofile |
After the launch, the main page of Draknetprofile will be displayed:

Figure 2: Management actions of Draknetprofile
The upper zone of the window contains the list of the names of all presently defined profiles. The bottom zone presents a series of buttons:
"Activate" ... establish the selected profile (top zone of the window) as the current profile (and save the properties of the old profile);
"New" ... create a new profile;
"Delete" ... delete the selected profile from the list of defined profiles;
"Quit" ... exit from Draknetprofile.
Before hitting the "Activate" or the "Delete" button, you have to select a profile from the list: select it by a left-button click on the name of the target profile.
Hitting the "New" button will launch an auxiliary window where you can type the name of the profile you want to create; this name must be different from any already existing profile. This profile will be created as a precise copy of the currently active profile and immediately activated as the current profile. You will probably then need to specify its properties (modify the automatically created configuration) in a second, independent action:
exit from Draknetprofile (hit the "Quit" button),
back in the "Network & Internet" tab, you select the tab "Set up a new network interface (...)" (marked with dashed red contour in Figure 1),
you then go through the steps for configuring the interface; they are similar to those you did for configuring the original interface during system generation - as documented in the Drakconnect manual.
The middle zone of the window is normally hidden, hit the "Advanced" button to make it visible. It should display the list of names of Draknetprofile "modules" (such as "network", "firewall", "urpmi"), each with a check-button next to the name; these check-buttons determine whether the properties controlled by that module are included into the profile or not.
In a system where several profiles are defined, an additional user interaction is required when the system boots: at the very end of the bootstrapping activities - just before the Desktop Environment starts - you will get a message like
Select network profile: (1) default (2)
roaming* |
Type 1 or 2 to select the "default", respectively the "roaming" profile, or carriage-return to select the profile that is marked with an asterisk (the profile that was active when the system had been shut down).
Presently (Mageia-5) there appears to be an intermittent problem: it happens that the system becomes unresponsive after soliciting the user to select a profile. The only way out of this situation is to launch another boot. This problem is under investigation.