[Oneiric topic] IPv6

[Etienne Goyer]

Hello everyone,

I have been having one-on-one conversation in the past few weeks with a
number of people around the question of IPv6 in Ubuntu.  With the
upcoming IPv4 armageddon, I think it is quite pressing that we make sure
that we have good end-to-end IPv6 support in Ubuntu.  I've been asked to
kickstart a discussion about it, and eventually distil the results in a
blueprint for the next UDS.

So, here are my notes on the stuff that would need to be investigated:


- Installer support: some work has been done upstream in netcfg and
d-i[1].  Not sure about the status.  I do not think Ubiquity has any
IPv6 support (or does it?)

- NFS: I was never able to make that work in Ubuntu.  Reportedly, it
requires nfs-utils 1.2.3, which just got uploaded to Debian.  I also
believe nfs-utils needs to be built with --enable-ipv6.

- DHCPv6: I understand we are getting that in Natty with isc-dhcp v4.  I
know SLAAC is the way to go in most case, but some people wants/needs
DHCPv6 for various reasons.  I guess it mostly needs testing.

- NetworkManager: It used to be that NetworkManager insisted upon
getting an IPv4 address, but Matt Trudel just marked bug #307598 as
fixed two weeks ago.  Presumably, NM now work fine in IPv6-only network,
but I have not tested yet.


Any other major roadblock beside the above?  I am going to sift through
the bugs tagged ipv6 on Launchpad, but if there's anything obvious I
missed, please let me know.

Finally, a question to consider is whether we want to address the
IPv6-only use-case (ie, not dual-stack, no IPv4 configuration).  This
has some implications, notably around d-i and NetworkManager.  Few
networks are IPv6-only at this time, but it's bound to change in the
near future.

Thanks for your insights.


[1]: http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2011/01/msg00883.html

-- 
Etienne Goyer
Technical Account Manager - Canonical Ltd
Ubuntu Certified Instructor   -    LPIC-3

 ~= Ubuntu: Linux for Human Beings =~