Additional network interfaces in OpenSUSE?

[Uwe Geuder <networkmanagerList-ugeuder snkmail com>]

If I understood it correctly in Debian/Ubuntu network manager will leave
additional interfaces defined in /etc/interfaces unmanaged. 

So you can combine your "main" internet access managed by networkmanager
(eth0, wlan0, ppp0 depending on where you are) with "additional" manual
network setting you might need insided you machine (e.g. for various
virtual machines you might be running)

Did I understand that corrcectly?

However, in OpenSUSE I cannot see how to achieve anything similar. As
soon as network manager is enabled, ifup does not work any longer.

>From what I see in the source code this is pretty unconditional:

from /usr/src/packages/BUILD/sysconfig-0.74.5/scripts/ifup: (OpenSUSE 11.4)

---clip--- 

######################################################################
# Check if NetworkManager is running, inform the user and exit
# 
if [ "$NETWORKMANAGER" = yes ] && ! netcontrol_running ; then
	if [ "$SCRIPTNAME" != ifdown -a "$INTERFACE" != lo ] ; then
		mesg "Network interface is managed by the NetworkManager -> skipping"
		exit $R_NOTIMPL
	fi
elif nm_running && [ "$INTERFACE" != lo ] ; then
	mesg "Network interface is managed by the NetworkManager -> skipping"
	exit $R_NOTIMPL
fi

--- clip ---

Hopefully I'm just missing something here.

Often it helps to know what one really wants to achieve, so here it
goes:

I need a bridge device for Xen. I let network manager take care of the
internet access (this is a laptop) The straight forward approach putting
the current "internet" interface chosen by network manager on the bridge
would require to set the network address & routing to the bridge device
instead of eth0/wlan0/ppp0. I don't think network manager can handle
that.

So my idea was to leave the bridge unmanaged from network manager, give
it a static internal IP address and use ipforward together with NAT to
connect the bridge with network manager's current "internet"
interface. However, no it looks in OpenSUSE I cannot even run "ifup br0"
when network manager is running.

Regards,

Uwe