On Wed, Feb 13, 2019 at 02:13:52PM -0600, Kent West wrote: > But, that leaves my second question unanswered: > > 2) What is the canonical current method in 2019 to [semi-]manually > configure networking in stretch? And is it documented anywhere? (My two > days of searching leads me to think "no". Or my google-fu really sucks.) > > I *thought* "/etc/network/interfaces" was being phased out (perhaps as part > of systemd or Network-Manager?). Then the web provides this answer then > that answer - "service...", "systemctl...", "ip...", "ifup...", "if up...", > and I'm confident some of these are deprecated or not preferred or apply in > Case X but not Case Y, etc. With "The Handbook" being out of date, is there > a definitive explanation/guide out there?
It's not being phased out, at least to my knowledge. There are, unfortunately, at least three competing ways to configure network interfaces in Debian: /etc/network/interfaces, NetworkManager, and systemd-networkd. I know nothing about systemd-networkd, except that it is disabled by default, so I won't discuss that. Someone else may feel free to talk about it. The other two are able to work in tandem. Any interface definition in the /etc/network/interfaces file is authoritative and exclusive. NetworkManager will not touch that interface. If NetworkManager isn't installed, then other interfaces not mentioned in /e/n/i will simply be left unconfigured. If NM is installed, then it will take control of any interfaces not configured by /e/n/i. NM is not installed by default with just the "Standard" task, but it *is* installed as a dependency of some, or perhaps all, of the desktop environment tasks. As far as I know, this is not new behavior; Debian has worked this way for at least a few releases. You may think the handbook is "out of date", and perhaps it is for some things, but not for this one.
