NetworkManager ( & bind)

Bill Rugolsky Jr. brugolsky at telemetry-investments.com
Tue Jan 18 21:48:00 UTC 2005


On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 09:24:53AM -0500, Dan Williams wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 23:14 -0500, Sandy Pond wrote:
> > Will NetworkManager not be in the base install for anaconda "server"
> > installation?
> 
> Yes, it should not be installed for servers.  NetworkManager is really
> only useful in a desktop context, and is mostly targetted at laptops
> where the user is mobile.  At this point, it doesn't really make sense
> for server environments, though that capability may well creep in at
> future points.

I'd really like to see dynamic network configuration make its way into the
server base.  The existing static configuration via the network scripts in
the initscripts package fails to utilize even a small fraction of the Linux
networking stack functionality added by Alexey Kuznetsov and others starting
back in the 2.2 kernel.  We are still using BSD-like initscripts, when the
Linux kernel has more in common with Cisco IOS.

Part of the problem is that integration is required to configure many
different subsystems: interfaces, tunnels, ipsec, policy routing rules,
routing tables, arptables, netfilter, traffic control, vrrp, etc.  When the
network topology changes, *all* of these subsystems are potentially affected.

A combination of event-driven state changes and more "aspect-oriented"
configuration syntax would ease the burden of, e.g., setting up
firewall routers with multiple upstream providers with differing QoS, etc.

Current Linux best practice in this instance, AFAIK, is documented on
Julian Anastasov's web pages: http://www.ssi.bg/~ja/ ; his kernel patches
mostly help to work around the lack of dynamic configuration in userspace.
I suppose that is why they have not been merged after many years.

I'm sure that there's a Ph.D. or two up for grabs for getting the details
right.

Regards,

	Bill Rugolsky




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