RFC: new modes in network-manager 0.7 + ifupdown

[Lars Wirzenius]

ti, 2008-10-07 kello 11:33 +0200, Alexander Sack kirjoitti:
>   b. Managed Mode (not default for now):
>   Devices with a hal interface.name that have a matching static or dhcp
>   configuration in /etc/network/interfaces will be explicitly managed by
>   NetworkManager. The ifupdown plugin honours your configuration and
>   automatically sets the mac address for the managed devices
>   appropriately.

As I understand, the point of the managed mode is to make it possible
for a user to manipulate the interfaces via nm-applet, even if the
interfaces are configured in /etc/network/interfaces. That's a worthy
goal, which I support. So far, though, it seems that it's making life
miserable for those who don't want give over all their interfaces to
NetworkManager (because, for example, NM can't deal with their
configurations). I feel it is necessary to keep ifupdown and NM co-exist
happily.

> For "Unmanaged mode", all should be fine as all interfaces configured
> in /etc/network/interfaces would still be managed exclusively through
> the ifup/ifdown commands.

Confirmed. This works well for me.

(I admit that I am going to remove NM from my desktop. Its network
configuration is a bit non-trivial, because of KVM and bridging, so NM
can't handle it, and there's no point in having NM on a system with a
static network configuration anyway. It's just one more moving part that
may break.)

> For now, my personal preference is solution 2a). It does not disable
> ifup/ifdown completely, while it would prevent issues due to devices
> being accidentially/automatically managed my ifup/ifdown at startup.

"ifup -a" should (obviously) only be disabled if NM is running in
managed mode. Otherwise it is too difficult for a system (via init.d) or
user to bring up their network interfaces. They would have to bring them
up one by one, which can be quite tedious.

We could teach ifupdown about NetworkManager so that if NM is running in
managed mode, ifup/ifdown talk to NM to manipulate the interfaces rather
than doing it directly. Or to give an error message to the user in that
situation.