Re: new ip settings method acceptibility

["Shawn J. Goff" <shawn7400 gmail com>]

On Tue 14 Aug 2012 12:05:15 PM EDT, Pavel Simerda wrote:

> > I disagree that this would be a misuse; care to elaborate?
>
> Sure. Methods are for everyday use. You want to have standard automatic
> connection? It's there. You want to have static configuration? There.
> You want to act as a router instead? Use shared.
>
> Method in NetworkManager is the basic mode of function. Tweaks for specific
> use cases can be done with various options for tweaking the IP config. If
> it's 'something like shared', it should probably be 'shared'.
>
> > I do agree that it is a corner case, which is why I'm asking now.
>
> Corner cases are best handled by tweaking the method with more options,
> is it good enough for you?

I would agree, but I don't think any of the existing methods could be 
tweaked into this setup.

> My impression is that... if there is a good use case for that, it should
> be possible to do it with keyfile configuration. Whether it gets to the
> GUI and/or conf plugins would be the next question.

Absolutely. I would definitely not expect this to be in any gui; it 
would be downright confusing for pretty much every user who uses the gui.

> NM doesn't currently fit well in black magic networking, OpenWRT used to
> do slightly better. But if you can make this work well with NetworkManager,
> it'll be a pleasant surprise for me.

Agreed. I'll be looking at NCD 
(http://code.google.com/p/badvpn/wiki/NCD) as another option.

> For the first tests it might be helpful if NetworkManager can be tweaked
> *not* to commit IP addresses to the interface. Your fake address and other
> things could generally be done with dispatcher.d scripts. Many things can
> be done with helper daemons and helper scripts.

Dispatcher scripts could work. I think I've read on this list seveal 
times that it's important for NetworkManager to know the state of the 
network, so I've thought I need to avoid doing things outside of 
NetworkManager to avoid confusing its state machine.

If it would not be a problem, I could add a dispatcher script to do 
everything pretty simply: record the address/netmask/gateway from 
$INTERFACE, add the fake address to $INTERFACE and remove the original 
one, add the SNAT rule, bring up the alternate interface, start dhcpd 
with the stored info.

If this would cause problems , maybe I should take a closer look at NCD 
and netifd first.

> It still seems to be rather complicated but now I at least understand the
> use case. While I'm not convinced that we need another mode, and I'm not
> convinced that we need a user-friendly way to set up your use case, I'll
> be happy work out a way that makes NM usable for your use case at least with
> some scripting and possibly an external tool.

Thanks for your help.