Re: on manual configuration / respecting user made changes

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Tue, 2016-04-05 at 10:53 +0200, Xen wrote:
> Question:
>
> Currently when NM manages a link/device (say eth0) any attempt to
> manually configure it (using e.g. ifconfig) will quickly result in
> this
> action being undone by NM.

That should not be the case with NM 1.0 and later.  These versions make
huge efforts to preserve additional IP configuration you add to the
interface, both addresses and routes.

Anything you add over-and-above what NM does (even if NM does nothing)
should be preserved.  I just tested with NM 1.0.10 and an ethernet
interface that NM showed as "disconnected" (because NM had not
activated a connection on it).  Simply running "ip addr add 1.2.3.4/24
dev enp0s25" caused NM to move the device to "connected" state and
report the added IP address.  NM reads the added configuration and
won't change it.

> Should there be any sense of not interfering with manual
> configuration?

Yes, NM spends a lot of effort to do this.

> I mean in a general sense what you see happening is this:
>
> 1. If some device is configured over DHCP in NM, but DHCP might be
> failing and there is nothing configured
> 2. Manual configuration of the interface to a certain IP will work
> for
> about 20 seconds, after which NM will deconfigure the device.

What NM version are you using?  This works for me on NM 1.0 as
described above.

Dan

> Should there not be a model where:
>
> - NM recognises manual configuration
> - NM turns itself off until called for (via GUI, nmcli)
> - NM reads new configuration data from the manual configuration when
> required, e.g. displaying this information in its GUI
>
> Or in a different light:
>
> - simply being able to read config from /etc/network/interfaces as
> well
> and use this as its source of configuration (I recognise OpenSUSE
> does
> not use this file).
>
> Regards,
>
> Bart.
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