NetworkworkManger and network based filesystem /usr

[Hans de Goede]

Hi all,

As you know I've started as the newest member of the anaconda team this 
September. The first thing I've been working on is iSCSI support in the Fedora 
(master) branch of anaconda.

Getting anaconda into shape for iSCSI support is one, but getting the installed 
system to actually work with anaconda is a different problem altogether.

The problem here is that the current default in Fedora is to *always* use 
NetworkManager to configure the network interfaces.

But if you look in /etc/rc.d/rc5.d you will see:

S06cpuspeed
S07iscsid
S08iptables
S10network
S11auditd
S12rsyslog
S13iscsi
S22messagebus
S25fuse
S25netfs
S26haldaemon
S27NetworkManager

Note this is with both the old network service as well as NetworkManager 
enabled which is done just to illustrate things!

What you see here is that the old network service started at priority 10, with 
low priorities starting first, then at 13 iscsi got started and at 25 network 
filesystems (nfs, iscsi, etc) get fsck-ed (where applicable) and then mounten.

Then at 26 hal gets started and at 27 NetworkManager.

Now here we have a problem as in the brave new world without the old network 
service, when iscsi gets started and when netfs tries to mount nfs shares, the 
network is not configured yet as NetworkManager hasn't been started yet.

This can probably best be fixed by moving both hal and NetworkManager earlier 
and then waiting in iscsi and in netfs (for systems without iscsi but for 
example nfs) for NetworkManager to complete configuring the network, I already 
have a patch for the iscsi initscript todo this.

But there is a catch, hal and NetworkManager are currently under /usr which 
could be on a network based fs itself. So hal and NetworkManager will need to 
be moved to /bin and /lib[64], or alternatively we could declare that 
installations where /usr is on a different fs then / are not supported (which 
might be a good thing todo for F-10 and then move hal + NM for F-11).

Before I start filing bugs and submitting patches I would like some feedback on 
this. I would like to end this mail with noting that since we've choosen to 
move away from the old network scripts to an all NetworkManager based world, 
that moving hal + NM earlier and to the root fs seems to be the only solution.

Regards,

Hans