On Tue, Jul 11, 2023 at 03:06:57PM -0600, Sam Hartman wrote: > However, there are some significant disadvantages to netplan:
> 1) It's an extra layer. You can ignore it when reading the config (at > least if you aren't too surprised by your config ending up in /run). > But it is extra complexity, especially in a situation like " run dhcp on > my ethernet" that is relatively simple. > 2) It's a layer that you cannot ignore when editing the config. Netplan > is one way. It takes in config in its format and spews out either > NetworkManager config or systemd-networkd config. You can generate > extra config on top of what netplan does, but in my experience if you > want to edit the config that netplan controls, you need to either do it > through netplan or remove netplan and generate those config chunks by > hand (possibly after looking at how netplan did it). > It's possible there are some netplan modes I missed and some other ways > of doing things. It's also possible netplan has evolved since I looked > at it. > In the non-wifi case I think d-i's networking is too simple to justify > netplan. > A simple .network unit for systemd-networkd sounds like a better option. I am not unbiased here, but I'd like to offer a counterargument: to a user, there is value in consistency. Yes, netplan is an additional layer. But having a layer that a user can rely on being present on any Debian system, whether it's a cloud instance, a server, or a desktop install with wifi, can be a big help. As someone who learned what a netmask is in 1997 or earlier, I have been surprised to learn over the course of netplan's development just how many people configuring networks on Linux systems - including on servers and routers - don't actually know thing #1 about IPv4 and are trying to configure their networks based on the recipes they find on the Internet. Which also means their lives are made significantly easier when the recipes they find are more broadly applicable across different types of installs, and significantly harder if they have to separately search how to configure networking for clouds, servers, or desktops. The design goal of netplan is that it's a layer that you shouldn't have to peek underneath, because it exposes everything you would need to configure in networkd or NetworkManager. Granted it's not *completely* there yet, but with the work to make NetworkManager use netplan as its config backend (which means: in the next release of Ubuntu you can happily use nmcli, nm-applet, etc. to manage your network connections and get human-editable netplan files out), it's certainly close. And I can say that I am a happy user of netplan across multiple systems, with no need to manage networkd configuration directly. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer https://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org
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