Re: ppp and "offline state"

[Marc Herbert <Marc Herbert gmail com>]

Dan Williams a écrit :
> On Mon, 2009-09-07 at 12:53 +0200, Pietro Battiston wrote:
>> By looking at bugs filed and words spent in several different bug
>> trackers and mailing lists, I fear NM developers may be quite allergic
>> to the words forming the subject of this email,

I think "allergy" is an understatement.


> To repeat: NM tries to manage your network connectivity.  And if it
> doesn't have enough information to do that (because it's not managing
> your default internet connection) then it's pretty hard to do a good job
> of that, and you'll find that NM and whatever other method you're using
> (gnomeppp or whatever) are stepping on each other's toes.  Want to use
> one of the NetworkManager VPN plugins with your externally-managed
> connection?  You can't, precisely because it's externally managed and
> there's not *one* entity that has all the necessary information to make
> intelligent decisions about the network.

Please do not drag very simple requests into artificially complicated
discussions in order to confuse the reader (or even yourself?). There
are only two very basic, dead-simple questions here:

1. Is there any "NM_CONTROLLED=no" interface?
2. Should "online" or "offline" be reported?

Using words like "intelligence" or "the whole picture" to discuss such
simple things is quite worrying.


> These sorts of things are stuff that many people don't think about: the
> *whole* picture, not just one partial use-case.

In this case, one partial use-case that everyone and his dog is
complaining about.


> The solution: fix NM so it's able to handle your device natively.  It's
> not that hard, it simply requires some time.  It's on the list, but the
> more people that have time to help out, the faster it gets done.

The other, simple solution: when in doubt, do not lie and spuriously
break connectivity.

"in doubt == online" has always been the convenient truth on Unix, still
is outside NM's fantasy world, and still will be after it has been
replaced by something less stubborn.


Regards,

Marc