Re: boot process and networkManager

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Fri, 2006-08-11 at 13:02 -0400, Brent S. Elmer wrote:
> When does networkmanager actually set up the network?  It seems that
> the actual network connection and setup is too late in the boot
> process.  I am running openAFS which starts during the end of the boot
> process.  During the openAFS startup, it checks to make sure that it
> can connect to the afs server.  This works fine when not using
> networkmanager.  However, when using networkmanager, it doesn't appear
> that dns lookup is enabled yet.  If I hard code the ip address it does
> work.  During the debugging of the problem, I called ifconfig during
> the openAFS startup process and can see that eth0 has no "inet addr"
> associated with it yet when using networkmanager(neither does any
> other interface).  However, when not using network manager, during the
> openAFS startup, dns does work and eth0 has an "inet addr" associated
> with it.  It seems like other boot processes like ntpdate fail for the
> same reason.

NetworkManager starts the network when it has the necessary
authentication information to do so.  For wired networks (not running
802.1x), that happens when NM starts.  For wireless networks, that
happens when the first user logs in, since the authentication
information is stored in the user session.

The next version of NetworkManager will have the ability to "publish"
wireless configuration settings system-wide, and therefore allow
connection to a wireless network at boot time.

Note that NetworkManager will daemonize and do its work in the
background, and therefore you must have some smartness in either (a) the
app or (b) the service start scripts for openAFS.  You have to wait
until NetworkManager says you've got a network connection.  There are
tools to do this, Robert Love has one somewhere.

But this brings up the question as to why you're using NetworkManager
right now anyway.  You appear to require a connection at boot time, so
you must be using a system that is not expected to move.  For the
moment, you'll be better off using your normal static configuration
tools in your distro.  But sometime later this year we'll support the
system-wide config case, and NetworkManager will do what you want.

Dan