Hello Mike and list, On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 11:03:18AM +0100, Mike Gabriel wrote: > Hi Klaus, > > Am Donnerstag, 24. Februar 2011, 00:37:45 schrieb Klaus Knopper: > > Hi all, > > > > However, I found that another way of avoiding conflicts between > > NetworkManager and ifup/ifdown is possible by just making NetworkManager > > aware of everything preconfigured in /etc/network/interfaces, and > > actually using this file for NetworkManagers configuration handling, by > > setting: > > > > [main] > > plugins=ifupdown,keyfile > > > > [ifupdown] > > managed=true > > I haven't know these before... This sounds handy. > > My default network manager configuration though only gets activated after > user > login. Does a nm configuration as you propose enable network before the user > logs in?
The short answer is "yes". :-) There are several (mostly underdocumented) ways to let networkmanager configure the network. The best known one is communication between a graphical frontend (such as nm-applet for GTK and knetworkmanager for KDE), both exchanging information with networkmanager via dbus+hal. That is the one you mentioned: nm-applet will open a socket to networkmanager once the user logs in, and tell networkmanager which of the user-configured profiles to use, depending on the current network state and environment. When just using this scenario, NetworkManager won't do anything before you start the graphical desktop. The lesser known way, the "non-interactive" mode, is networkmanagers internal "system-settings" service, which was a standalone program in networkmanager versions before 0.7-something, and now is integrated directly in networkmanager. You can put configuration files in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/ (one file for each connection, in a very networkmanager-specific syntax), or let networkmanager read /etc/network/interfaces via the "ifupdown" plugin as mentioned above. These methods work entirely without a graphical GUI; I use this mode for configuring the network on the Audio/Textconsole based ADRIANE desktop. An advantage of using networkmanager with if ifupdown is that it will still react to connectivity changes immediately (provided there are different alternative connections given in /etc/network/interfaces, such as WLAN and LAN), when plugging in a LAN cable, detecting a previously configured WLAN essid and similar. Actually, there is no better textual interface for networkmanager known to me other than the ifup plugin and /etc/network/interfaces. Probably, you can also send configuration commands to networkmanager via dbus, and there is a "cnetworkmanager" script floating around that will do this, but for me, editing /etc/network/interfaces for use with networkmanager seems to be the easier way. Another advantage of using networkmanager is that it is easily visible for the user from the nm-applet icon in the graphical desktop, whether or not the client has a working network connection. Well, probably not a big help in skolelinux, since you won't even be able to login when Tjener is unreachable. ;-) > So basically, the point about network manager is: do we need network access > before the user logs (YES: for NFS etc.) and how can this be handled by > network manager... Again, yes, networkmanager will handle this without a user logged in, with its "system-settings" part, either via /etc/network/interfaces via managed=yes, or with an ifup/ifdown-independent configuration file in /etc/NetworkManager/system-settings/. To reload networkmanager after a change to /etc/network/interfaces, in older versions you had to kill the "nm-system-settings" process (which then respawned from networkmanager), and /etc/init.d/network-manager reload in newer versions. One thing that can cause problems occurs when mixing manual calls to ifup/ifdown when networkmanager is already handling devices, or configuring wpa_supplicant manually outside of /etc/network/interfaces, when networkmanager already has started wpa_supplicant with the settings known from the non-interactive configuration. I'm not casting a vote for or against keeping networkmanager here, either method will work, just wanted to point out that non-interactive configuration is indeed possible with networkmanager. Regards Klaus -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-edu-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110224112904.gg26...@knopper.net
