Re: let NM know about custom connection through dbus?

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Fri, 2009-03-13 at 18:11 +0100, Christopher Lang wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> lets assume I set up my own (lets call it specialppp) connection, through my 
> own application, and I would like NetworkManager to know about that 
> connection, display it as "active" in the applet as long it is there, but 
> leave it alone apart from that.
> 
> Is there a way I can tell NM about such a custom connection through dbus 
> methods?
> 
> What I am looking for is a dbus API that allows me to tell NM about a 
> connection that I set up, and either NM detects on his own if this connection 
> goes down, or I can tell him through dbus.

That's probably not going to implemented.  The issue here is that if the
connection/device isn't known to NM natively, it's not managed by NM, it
won't show up in NM's D-Bus interface, etc.  It's best to implement
support for those devices in NetworkManager natively itself; then NM can
properly respond to network events, handle routes correctly, handle IP
addresses correctly, apply user-defined IP/other settings correctly,
etc.  If the device is "external", then it's not going to have an NM
Connection object associated with it, and user apps aren't going to be
able to figure out enough information about the connection/device
either.  There's a lot more to the NM D-Bus API than just the device
itself and whether that device is connected or not.

Dan