Re: Autostarting NetworkManager in Fedora 8 prevents sshd to start properly

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Sat, 2007-12-29 at 17:32 +0000, Rui Tiago Matos wrote:
> On 29/12/2007, Robert Allerstorfer <linux-ra anet at> wrote:
> > On Sat, 29 Dec 2007, 15:59 GMT+01 Robert Allerstorfer wrote:
> >
> > > On Sat, 29 Dec 2007, 09:41 GMT-05 Dan Williams wrote:
> >
> > >> Sounds like sshd is binding to an IP address and not handling changes
> > >> when your IP address changes.  You should probably set up a
> > >> NetworkManagerDispatcher script to kick sshd in the head (ie service
> > >> sshd restart) when the network settings change.  This functionality
> > >> should really be in sshd itself, doing something like avahi does where
> > >> it watches netlink link & address events and handles the changes
> > >> automatically.
> >
> > > I will try to change the start priority of avahi-daemon from 96 to 99
> > > to see if it solves the problem.
> >
> > Changing the start priority of avahi-daemon didn't help. What about
> > decreasing the start priority of the NetworkManager service from 98 to
> > somewhat below the one of sshd? Is NetworkManager required to start so
> > late (98)? Here are all current start positions of Fedora 8 in
> > runlevel 5:
> 
> Forget about it. I think Dan misunderstood you. From your original

Well, my point was that there are services that are too stupid to know
about on-the-fly address and network interface changes.  Those services
including things like (apparently) sshd, ntpd, nfs, ekiga, etc.  The
problem you're talking about should manifest themselves if you change
the IP address of the machine _after_ you've started any of these types
of services, even if you don't use NetworkManager.

There are two solutions:

1) Make these services aware of address changes.  avahi does this; my
point with avahi is that it's certainly possible to notice IP address
and network interface changes after your service is started, and to
handle them sanely.

2) write a NetworkManagerDispatcher script that restarts the stupid
services when NetworkManager has changed the network configuration.
This is pretty trivial.

Note that changing startup script ordering, or using service
dependencies won't help you here, because if your network configuration
changes at all after boot (which is highly likely for many users) then
you're right back in the same boat as before...

Dan

> posting you are basically saying that your machine isn't IP
> addressable until someone logs in which is the normal behaviour of NM.
> Until NM gains the ability to do system wide configurations (i.e.
> before anyone starts its applet) you better not use it if you want to
> access your machine remotely. Period.
> 
> This system wide configuration I think is being worked on. Maybe Dan
> is actually working on it right now and that's why he didn't read your
> mail closely enough ;-)
> 
> Rui
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