Re: Network Manager does not find system wide connections

[Hadmut Danisch <hadmut danisch de>]

Graham Lyon wrote:
>
>
> Then documentation should be fixed, not the method itself. DBus is the
> best approach to do this, it uniffies IPC in unix, which is a *good*
> thing.

Network configuration is such an essential and basic function, that it
should not depend
on IPC.  IPC means that  several processes must exist, and this is error
prone by default.


IPC may be an addon, but it should work without IPC.





>
> NM is not interweaved with desktop applications. You're confusing the
> user settings manager with network manager itself.

A plain user will store his network settings under Gnome or KDE and such
within the Gnome and KDE
configuration methods. This depends on desktop applications. Without a
desktop network manager will
not find any user specific config. And I did not yet see any command
line front end.




>  
>
> It's actually the best way to get the two levels of configuration that
> I can think of.
Storing network configuration in Gnome or KDE in a way that they are not
available if someone uses the other Desktop is a bad idea. Network
settings are
not desktop settings and thus should not be stored in the Gnome or KDE
configuration.





>  
>
> It doesn't need a running desktop to be configured, and lots of system
> relevent applications require DBus (it's not a desktop program).

And that's wrong.

DBus is not started in single user mode. So NetworkManager could not be
used in single user mode.

A network configuration that does not work in single user mode is a flaw.





>  
>
>     Networking must be able to work even in single user mode in a simple
>     terminal
>     with a shell session and must not depend on anything else.
>
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it does as long as the daemon is
> started and the system settings daemon is started.

That's one of the problems. Network configuration must not depend on
that many daemons.

Network configuration must be able to work on its own, even if
everything else is absent.


>  
>
> Windows had for years a much better way of managing network settings
> for anyone with wireless or a laptop that moved between work and home.

Windows did (and does) for years a completely different task. Windows
does not leave you the choice between several desktops. Windows does not
have a single user mode.


Your are confusing two things:

Giving a user a graphical user interface for easy configuration does not
necessarily mean to give it a bad implementation as well.

You could give Network Manger a much more robust and better design and
still have a graphical user interface.





Hadmut