Re: Static IP settings in 0.7 -- per "connection" or "interface"?

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Wed, 2007-09-05 at 19:01 +0200, liam321 123mail org wrote:
> Good day all,
> 
> The NetworkManagerFAQ[1] indicates that "Better support of static IP
> addresses is planned and in-progress for NetworkManager 0.7.", as does
> various emails on the mailing list archives (though it is not totally
> clear from NetworkManagerToDo[2]).
> 
> I guess it will then be possible for the user to set stuff like IP
> address, Subnet mask and Gateway (is that right?) 
> 
> Question: Will such settings be configured per *"connection"*, so that I
> could, for example, use one static IP for one wireless access point,
> another static IP for another wireless access point, and dynamic IP for
> others? Or will the settings be configured per *"interface"* (such as
> eth0, eth1...)?

Per connection.  There's a page at live.gnome.org called
NetworkManagerConfiguration and NetworkManagerConfigurationSpecification
that you may want to look at.  Note that those pages represent the
ideal, and many of those options won't quite work for a bit...

> (I would much prefer the former..)
> 
> How about wired access points? Will NetworkManager be able to
> differentiate between different wired "connections" (or  "access
> points"), and store different settings for them?

If you create multiple connections for an interface that does not have a
good means to autodetect what connection to use (ie, ethernet, serial
modem, etc), you will need to explicitly choose which connection you'd
like.  You can mark one connection as "autoconnect = False", NM won't
try it by default.  So I think you can have one Connection as default
when you plug in the cable, and others available as you need them.

Whether or not in the future there's some sort of autodetection by
arping or otherwise of a known MAC address is something people have
proposed, but needs a lot more discussion (sysadmins hate it).

Dan

> 
> As a sidenote I would like to say that I find NetworkManager to be
> totally excellent. 
> 
> Best regards
> 
> Hugo Heden
> 
> [1]
> http://live.gnome.org/DarrenAlbers/NetworkManagerFAQ#head-c8b3f6905f51eed368b9c21893edabcc82531bbc
> [2] http://live.gnome.org/NetworkManagerToDo
>