Re: Is Network Manager in 11.3 different from 11.2?

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Fri, 2010-08-06 at 11:17 -0700, Robert Smits wrote:
> For many years I've used scpm to reconfigure my laptop by changing the nfs
> fstab file depending on what environment I was in. This year I understand
> scpm is no longer available in 11.3, and I've been told to use network
> manager. In 11.2, network manager, despite it's name couldn't manage
> networks, just connections. Has network manager changed so I can easily
> alter my nfs setup as I move my laptop from connection to connection?

That depends on exactly what your needs were :)  Back in 2008 your
question was about "network profiles" which you could select at startup
and which would automatically start your NFS/SMB shares for you when the
network was connected.

In NM-land you can do that with dispatcher scripts, which are basically
like hooks that run when the network has gone up or has gone down.
There's more information about this in 'man NetworkManager'.

NetworkManager works with "connections" which are mostly like profiles,
except you don't have to pick one on startup.  They are mostly
autodetected for those network types where we can detect such stuff.
Each connection has an UUID (universally unique identifier) which can be
used to perform operations when that connection goes up or down, like
mounting specific shares.

What's not there that I seem to recall you wanted was the ability to
automatically mount shares without having to write scripts because at
the time you were not comfortable doing so.  And I admit there is not a
good, user-friendly mechanism to do this yet from the GUI.  It can,
however, be done with dispatcher scripts.

In Fedora we ship an 05-netfs script which restarts the 'netfs' service
when a network connection goes up or down.  'netfs'is is a simple
service that mounts and unmounts any CIFS/SMB, NFS, or NetWare mount
listed in /etc/fstab.  I have to assume that SUSE has something similar.
It doesn't care about the connection UUID, but UUID checks could be
added to bring up certain shares only when connected to your home
network for example.

Dan