Re: NetworkManager on Debian

[Hristo Hristov <xpertbg gmail com> (by way of Hristo Hristov <xpertbg gmail com>)]

On Thu, 01 May 2008 10:21:51 -0400
Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com> wrote:

> On Thu, 2008-05-01 at 14:27 +0300, Hristo Hristov wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I was trying to make NM work with Debian with the help of Michael
> > Biebl. I found several issues:
> > 1) When the nm-system-settings was not working (because of missing configuration 
> > file) the gnome applet was not showing when a wired network was enabled in the 
> > left-click menu, and I could not get network information from the right-click menu.
> > Is this expected behaviour?
> 
> I don't quite understand.  You're saying that nm-system-settings was
> unable to claim it's D-Bus service name?  If that's the case, then NM
> wouldn't be able to talk to it, and couldn't get any connections from
> it, and then couldn't connect the wired network.  Could you explain a
> bit more?
nm-system-settings was not running. When NM tries to start it, it cannot find the 
configuration file /etc/nm-system-settings.conf and exits. NM starts the default 
wired connection (using DHCP) but doesn't show it as running in the list of connections
- there is a list item "Auto eth0" but it's radio button is not selected.
> 
> > 2) NM 0.7 doesn't seem to use the configuration of wireless networks I had from 0.6
> 
> The applet will convert the keys in GConf (see src/applet-compat.c) into
> connections that 0.7 can use.
I connected to 2 connections I had before (in 0.6) and NM asked me for the key again.
> 
> > 3) I'm trying to make NM work with resolvconf. I want to pass DNS configurations 
> > received from DHCP to the dispatcher and then to the dispatcher script. I have no 
> > knowledge of dbus, so I made an ugly patch to pass the first nameserver configuration.
> > Could you tell me what should be the correct way of passing the nameservers 
> > to the dispatcher?
> 
> You shouldn't be using the dispatcher for this or any other core
> functionality of NM.  Instead, what information does resolvconf need,
> and how do you call it?  Can we detect when the user wishes to run with
> resolvconf enabled?  I view resolvconf as just one more method to
> handle /etc/resolv.conf, in addition to the (broken) caching-nameserver
> code and the direct resolv.conf manipulation.  I'd rather teach NM about
> resolvconf properly if we can.
In Debian if resolvconf is installed, then it is used to generate /etc/resolv.conf
In src/backends/NetworkManagerDebian.c nm_system_should_modify_resolv_conf returns 
false if resolvconf is found. Then the dispatcher calls the script included in 
the deb package /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/01ifupdown that in it's turn 
executes run-parts /etc/network/if-up.d and that
calls /etc/network/if-up.d/000resolvconf. This script
calls /sbin/resolvconf with the proper parameters to create 
/etc/resolv.conf
Michael Biebl also don't like and don't use resolvconf, but IMHO
this is the correct way to update /etc/resolv.conf when resolvconf
is installed (on Debian). In v0.6.6 of NM when it queried dhcdbd 
for the dhcp configuration, it used to call /sbin/resolvconf with
the proper parameters and this way /etc/resolv.conf was updated.
Now that this is changed I'm trying to use the dispatcher to call
/sbin/resolvconf. I'm not sure that this is correct and that it will
be used in Debian...

BR,
Hristo