Re: Networkmanager and network alias interface.

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Mon, 2011-10-03 at 15:35 +0200, Anders Gnistrup wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I have searched for a method to define network alias. Previous I could do this in the /etc/network/interfaces.
> The NM version is 0.84. 
> 
> iface eth0 inet dhcp
> iface eth0:0 inet static
> bla, bla.....
> 
> I have searched for a method but it does not seems to be possible. I have tried to make a configuration and set the 
> [ifupdown]
> managed=true

You can assign more than one address to the interface via keyfile
connection config files, but I don't think that's possible via /e/n/i at
this time.  Somebody could write patch which would recognize the 'alias'
format and simply add the static address to the IP config for the
connection.

> Unfortunate, only one IP can be active on eth0/eth0:0, but they are visible in the nm-applet.
> Then I have tried to set up VLAN's but there olse seems to be some missing support.

VLAN is not currently supported, but is being added to the  next
release.

> My goal is to setup a DHCP connection and a link local (zeroconf) connection on eth0 (or eth0:0,,,), using networkmanager, but it does not seems to be possible.

Hmm, yeah, having both DHCP and zeroconf on the interface at the same
time isn't currently something NM supports well.

> The missing trick seems to create virtual interfaces and make these visiable in Network Manager.

NM allows any number of addresses to be applied to the interface,
because you really don't need the "eth0/eth0:0" notation for a few years
now.  That was a hack because /sbin/ifconfig didn't allow setting
multiple addresses on the same interface.  These days with netlink
and /sbin/ip it's trivially possible, and NM uses the same mechanisms to
make it happen.  Thus you can have  multiple IP addresses on eth0 alone
and not have to bother with eth0:0 or eth0:1 etc.

At the moment I think it's only possible via keyfile config files
(/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections) because the UI in
nm-connection-editor wasn't really written for advanced use-cases like
this in mind.

Dan