NetworkManager: I want to believe, but... [was Re: F9 potential service network bug?]

[Dan Williams]

On Thu, 2008-05-22 at 10:25 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
> On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 01:04:43AM +0100, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> > The pluses are that:
> > - it should be able to boot up faster (note the should)
> 
> Because of delaying network initialization, or something else? I'm generally
> not interested in boot time per se except in the sense of
> time-to-fully-operational. (For machines with static addresses -- this isn't
> the laptop case.)

If you have a wired interface marked for DHCP, but no cable plugged in,
and ONBOOT=yes, the network service will block waiting until the DHCP
timeout.  In general, you want connections to come up as they become
available.

> > - it informs applications that you're connected to the network (say, you
> > unplug the network, the router dies, or the driver for your network card
> > drops you off the network)
> 
> I can see this being handy in some cases, but mostly, the network status of
> statically-configured machines is generally best monitored externally.
> 
> > - and finally, it will allow routing over multiple connections in the
> > future (so static wired, and wireless routed over the wired, or all the
> > wired routed over a WWAN in case your internet connection breaks).
> 
> This can be done already with static configuration, but if it makes an
> auto-fallback easy to configure that does seem like a plus -- but very
> special purpose.
> 
> 
> C'mon, seriously, is that all you've got? :)
> 
> The real major plus I see is: "It's good for the desktop, so doing it on
> servers means it all works the same." But that's kind of a hard sell -- and
> since in many cases I end up the one _making_ the sell, I'd like something
> more to work with.

Many of the features of NetworkManager do make life easier on desktops
and aren't as useful on a server machine.  So if you're just interested
in servers, the story shouldn't be any different with NM than with the
'network' service, except that NM provides a single source for
information about the network that programs can query.

If you're using a single ethernet adapter, statically configured,
without a desktop, and only running say httpd and samba, then no, you
probably don't want to use NM.  You certainly _could_ if you wanted to.

If we're talking about GUIs, or more mobile machines like laptops or
mobile internet devices, or desktops in general, or multi-user systems
where finer-grained control of network devices is desired, then I can
list more advantages of NetworkManager.

Dan