Re: Network Manager with 802.1X and Switch ports on "General mode"

[Marcel Holtmann <marcel holtmann org>]

Hi Andreu,

> We are trying to use NetworkManager to handle connections on a wired network with authentication via 802.1X 
> and a special configuration but we can't manage to make it work.
>  
> All ports of the switches where the clients are connecting are configured in general mode, allowing traffic 
> from different vlans, and also untagged traffic.
>  
> If we use a Windows host on that port, everything works perfectly, the authentication to the radius server 
> works fine and the machine receive the traffic as expected.
> The problem is that when connecting a linux to the network the machine authenticates correctly and radius 
> assign the vlan to the port, then the machine gets the traffic tagged with the vlan, but Network Manager 
> does not seem to pick it up and bring up a vlan sub-interface to handle that traffic. If we bring it up 
> manually using ifup eth0.vlan_number, it works 

if you are feeling adventures and want to try something out, then you can try ead (Ethernet authentication 
daemon) from here:

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/network/wireless/iwd.git

It is a new effort to get the 802.1x wired connections under control. It might not even work for you either. 
However we plan to do all the needed VLAN setup if provided. So if you want to help out that would be 
awesome. There is no Network Manager integration at this point, but we are working on that, too.

Regards

Marcel