A script to change network location automatically

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As I mentioned earlier in this blog, I run a squid proxy in my home network. I’m using Mac OS X’s location feature to have two settings, a default on without proxy, and my home network with some customisations, including the proxy setting. Of course, when I move around I always forget to switch. As I always have a shell terminal open, I wanted a command that just fixes the issue by looking at the current wifi setting. There are numerous apps trying to solve the same problem on the web, they are usually way to complicated for my taste: adding icons to the menu bar, running on a permanent basis and generally making a nuisance of themselves. I was kind of surprised this feature was not added to Mac OS, as iOS solves the problem more elegantly: proxy settings are associated with the SSID.

The good news is that there are two command-line tools that provide the needed information. The first is
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport which can be used to return information about the current 802.11 network. The second is
/usr/sbin/scselect which can be used to select the current location. So I wrote a small Python script that uses the information from the first to configure the latter. The configuration is simply the map in the beginning of the file, which contains the relationship between Network name and location name. You can download it here

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