Re: Bugs in network manager

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Sat, 2008-11-29 at 17:57 +0100, Alexander Sack wrote:
> 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.

The correct change here was the 'read-only' connection patches, and the
fix in the system settings service to make the "Auto ethX" connection
read-only, since it cannot actually be changed yet.  In the future we
should actually try to save that connection with the modifications if
there is a plugin enabled that supports saving.

> 
> > 
> > 
> > 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?

A recent fix to src/nm-vpn-connection.c ensured that VPN connection
secrets are cleared when the connection goes down, so that the secrets
will be requested again on the next connection activation.

> > 
> > 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.

Hmm, the Link-local stuff has nothing to do with dnsmasq, it's
avahi-autoipd.

> > 
> > 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.

Yep, it could, but there's also no good way to get information out of
'iptables' other than screenscraping stderr, even that isn't (a)
translated or (b) guaranteed.  Ideally we use netlink or something, but
I don't think we're there yet with libnl.

> > 
> > 
> > 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).

Is that one upstream or have I already applied it?  I think you did send
something for that.

Dan

> > 
> > 
> > 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.