Re: NM do not see any network

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Fri, 2006-12-08 at 12:30 -0500, Darren Albers wrote:
> On 12/8/06, Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com> wrote:
> > On Thu, 2006-12-07 at 21:57 -0500, Darren Albers wrote:
> > > dispatch_more_events: Seems to add pre-up and post-down events to
> > > dispatcher.d  Wasn't this always an option?  Maybe what someone asked
> > > earlier about running a command before an interface is activated is
> > > possible with dispatcher.d with this patch?
> >
> > Interesting; these events are quite a bit less interesting than it may
> > seem.  'pre-up' would be time-bounded, since NM certainly doesn't call
> > out to synchronous, blocking scripts when it brings up a connection, nor
> > should it.  So whatever script gets called here for pre-up will have to
> > be pretty fast, because NM isn't going to wait for it before continuing.
> > This is quite racy and therefore wrong.
> >
> > I'm not sure what "post-down" means; there's already the disconnected
> > event from the dispatcher which executes scripts when the connection is
> > terminated.
> 
> I see what this does (whether this is smart or not is beyond me...),
> the package adds a script to dispatcher that users these two new
> events to call the general networking configuration items that are
> required by Ubuntu.  For example pre-up is used to trigger a script
> that calls the standard networking scripts for Debian/Ubuntu:
> The first sets some wireless options using the wireless tools and the
> second starts wpa_supplicant.   The postdown does the opposite and
> shutsdown wpa_supplicant and then sets all the wireless configuration
> options to their defaults again.
> 
> I think this is done so that people can set some specific items in
> /etc/network/interfaces such as speed, channel etc.. but as long as
> they keep the interface set to use DHCP Network Manager will continue
> to manage it.
> 
> Could this be a potential problem for Network Manager if things like
> the rate are set there?
> 
> >
> > > disabled_devices: This tells NM not to touch devices managed in
> > > /etc/network/interfaces
> >
> > Right; everybody does this and that's fine; but Ubuntu seems to do it
> > automatically without telling users what's going on.  SUSE has a config
> > option in YAST, and half the questions we get here are about this
> > problem in Ubuntu, because people don't realize that touching something
> > in a config tool there turns something else off in NM.
> 
> I agree and I wonder if until the recent announcement that they really
> wanted people to use NetworkManager?   Their point was probably that
> rewriting the gnome-network-panel to inform the users of this was too
> much work to make it by release or that there was nobody who wanted to
> take it on.
> 
> 
> > > hostap-supplicant-driver: adds a workaround for the hostap driver
> >
> > What does this one do?
> 
> If it detects any of the following kernel_drivers hostap_pci,
> hostap_cs, and hostap_plx it passes hostap to wpa_supplicant.
> 
> > > I saw in the release notes for Feisty beta (I forgot the catchy code
> >
> > Feisty Fawn Herd 1 :)
> >
> > > name they used) that NM might be the default network management
> > > utility for Feisty so I think the testing period there will hopefully
> > > shake out any issues with their packages and maybe (hopefully?) will
> > > get some patches sent upstream.
> >
> > Hmm, I thought Ubuntu was still punting NM-by-default since it doesn't
> > cover a bunch of use-cases like static IP.  That's fine, Fedora doesn't
> > turn it on by default either for that same reason.  SUSE's out in front
> > a bit here, which actually helps everyone out by exposing issues and
> > problems.
> 
> Here is the spec they plan on implementing:
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/network-roaming
> It seems very redundant to 0.7 which I thought would be out with

Right; much of that is pretty redundant for 0.7.  But a few other bits
seem right on.

> plenty of time for Feisty April release date...  Is 0.7 still on track
> for Jan?

Maybe February or early March, but certainly before April.  The
wpa_supplicant control parts are within sight of being done, and then
it's on to speccing out the new configuration interface and doing
multiple active devices, which will actually _simplify_ the code and
DBus interface, for a change.

> On a side note I used Fedora for the first time on a Mac Mini my wife
> gave me for my birthday (I really tried to like MAC OS but little
> things kept annoying me about it) and I was impressed.   It shows a
> lot of polish and there were some things that I really liked about it
> and it will probably stay since my needs on that system are a lot less
> than on my laptop so I won't need to learn all the nuances of another
> distro.

Neat.  0.7 will get into FC7 at least, and there it will certainly be
better integrated.

Dan