Re: Bugs in network manager

[Alexander Sack <asac ubuntu com>]

On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 05:03:08PM +0200, Maxim Levitsky wrote:
> Recently I installed ubuntu 8.10.
> 
> I found few bugs in new network manager, and I like to report them here.
> I will also fill them at bugzilla.
> 
> 
> 1. any wireless connection marked as "system setting" doesn't work, nm
> attempts to connect but fails.
> Such connections confuse the nm to the point that it might even forget
> about a connection and create a new one, I not sure about this, but I
> avoid them now, as they really are unstable, nm even crashed few times
> when system wide connections were there. On top of that to switch
> between local and system connection it in not enought to toggle the
> checkbox, but you must change any setting with the checkbox.

I think there have been improvements in trunk after we released
intrepid. Though I dont know about crashes. Can you get backtraces for
those cases?


> 
> 2. Auto enabled wired connections "Auto eth0" appear on each boot.
> This means that even if I set up a manual connection and make it
> autoconnect, on next boot "Auto eth0" will reappear and be used instead
> of manual connection. Editing "auto eth0" doesn't help, it is reset
> after boot.
> 

Same here. I have to spot the right changes and then have to backport
that.


> 
> 
> 3. Even if I tell nm not to remember VPN password it still uses same
> password if VPN connection failed (I talk about pptp) 
> The problem is that I connect to network that uses one time password
> generator combined with pin.
> This means that if I mistype the pin or password, or time runs out, 
> I can't reconnect since nm uses now surly invalid password.
> 

Haven't heard of this bug ... which network-manager-pptp package are
you using?

> 
> 4. Link-local is broken, this is not your failt, the problem is that
> avahi-autopid uses dbus to connect to some service, but it is forbidden
> by dbus even for root, I fixed this, and I post details later.

you need to install dnsmasq-base package. We will add this to a
Recommends, so it gets auto installed in future.

> 
> 5. If nat modules aren't compiled in kernel there is no warning about
> that, but connection sharing just fails, I din't yet test this with nat
> modules, would be fine to add description stating that this is NAT.
> 

Error condition reporting probably could be improved in general.

> 
> 
> 6. There is no way to tell with connection should control default
> gateway.
> I connect to my university via vpn to watch lectures, but I don't want
> it to be the gateway, I only want vpn for their netmask.

You can edit the routes in the vpn settings. If I am not mistaken,
there is a pending fix for making those settings be honoured in
-proposed (so in a few days you will get the update).

> 
> 
> 7. Same when I use wired connection to my second laptop, for speed
> reasons.
> I know that I can provide no default gateway for connection, but this is
> not enough, and on top of that this is only possible for static address,
> but I can't use static address for my isp.
> 
> 
> 8. More to come.

I will provide a 0.7 final backport soon in the network-manager PPA
... unfortunately we cannot put that right into intrepid, because on
trunk there were last minute API/ABI changes which make this option
impossible from a stable release policy perspective.

 - Alexander