Re: multiple active interfaces/connections in NM

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 11:53 +0800, CS Wong wrote:
> hi, 
> 
> Would like to know if NM is meant to cover use cases where mutiple
> active interfaces are used with some custom routing...
> 
> For e.g., I sit in my client's place connected to their internal
> network (ethernet). I can access my client's servers there but I can't
> get on the net. I have a 3G modem that I can plugin to access
> internet.
> 
> Problem is, my routes and DNS settings seem to be controlled by either
> one of connections only. I'd like to use both of them at the same
> time; i.e. both interfaces active, and together with a few custom
> routes that ensures intranet traffic goes out the ethernet port and
> everything else goes into ppp.

This should be exactly what happens now, if you check the "Use this
connection only for resources on its network" checkbox in the Routes...
dialog of the IPv4 tab of the Ethernet connection you've set up in the
connection editor (right-click on the applet and choose "Edit
connections..." or else run nm-connection-edtior).

That checkbox was added to NM 0.7.1 specifically for situations like
this.  I use it mostly on VPNs, but it works for any connection,
including ethernet.

If there's any additional custom routing you need to do, then you can
set that up from a dispatcher script.  These go
in /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d and are executed when interfaces go
up or down.  See 'man NetworkManager' in 0.7.1 for more details.

Hopefully your distro has NM 0.7.1, otherwise you may want to nudge them
to update it :)

Dan

> I can manually add routes right now, but the problem with 3G is that
> dropouts are pretty frequent and every time my connection gets reset,
> NM will reset my entire routing table. That sucks 'cos it basically
> means my SSH sessions to my servers in the intranet will be reset.
> 
> I'm pretty sure part of the issue is whether my NM front-end
> (currently using NM KDE 4 plasmoid) is capable of handling this or not
> but i'm willing to forget abt the front end if I can pull together a
> bunch of bash scripts to do what I need.
> 
> thanks
> Wong
> 
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