Re: Priority of network adapters

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Thu, 2009-02-05 at 22:22 +0100, Marcin Wołyniak wrote:
> Dnia Dan Williams 04.02.2009 18:06 napisał(a):
> > On Wed, 2009-02-04 at 11:15 +0100, marcin.wolyniak wrote:
> >> Hi everyone,
> >>
> >> I see one annoying for me bahaviour of NM in my IBM T41 laptop. When I
> >> start the machine ( cold or from hibernate ) with eth cable connected
> >> and built-in wifi enabled NM chooses wifi connection first. Despite the
> >> higher speed link exists ie eth0 to connect to. I have to manually
> >> switch the connection to eth0 through NM applet.
> > 
> > NM 0.6 or NM 0.7?  Both should be choosing the wired connection as the
> > default as long as the DHCP server is returning a gateway, or as long as
> > you've set a gateway manually if you're using static IP on the ethernet.
> 
> NM 0.7 in F9 or F10.
> 
> > 
> > Can you post some logs from /var/log/messages so we can figure out what
> > NM thinks it's doing?  What specific NM RPM version is this with?
> Currently:
> 
> NetworkManager-0.7.0-1.git20090102.fc10.i386
> 
> but NM behaves  like this at every RPM version from F9 and F10 for sure. 
> (0.7 series). In F7 or F8 ( 0.6 series ) I do not remeber exactly.
> 
> > 
> >> More, it switches to wifi correctly when I disconnect eth cable, but
> >> doesn't switch back to eth connection when i connect back the cable.
> >>
> >> Am I missing something in configuration or is it bug?
> > 
> > Likely a bug.
> > 
> >> Is it possible to arbitrary set priority of NICs the NetworkManager
> >> uses?
> > 
> > No, because that's not usually needed as long as there aren't any
> > bugs :)
> I asked for setting adapter priority, because I used it in IBM Access 
> Connections manager under Win. I think it is worth to consider feature 
> like this. Of course it is my user point of view.
> 
> Under IBM's manager I can set priority and "automate" conections 
> switching. Let me point two situations I used IBM's manager:
> 
> - I can connect with cable at the highest priority, then I can connect 
> through wifi usb card of IEEE 802.11g at lower priority, but when i 
> disconnect this card I always can connect with built-in IEEE 802.11b 
> card as a last resort. All automagically switching back and forth 
> without making any mouse clicks.
> 
> - create sort of failover chain in machine with two (or more) cards. 
> when link goes down on one card then net configuration switches in given 
> way from one card to another. When link goes back to the highest 
> priority card - then we are back in "default" config.
> 
> > 
> >> I use Fedora 10 now, but the same problem existed in previous Fedoras (
> >> 7,8,9) I used. Selinux is enabled but disbling it doesn't have any
> >> imapct on this NM behavior
> > 
> > If you like, you can send /var/log/messages to me privately if you're
> > concerned about something in the logs you'd rather not have public.
> 
> Log sent to You privately.

Can you post the contents of /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 ?
You may have ONBOOT=yes set, which for NM means "don't automatically
connect to this connection".

Dan