Fedora Core 4 Test Update: NetworkManager-0.5.1-1.FC4.1

[Dan Williams]

On Tue, 2006-01-10 at 03:40 +0000, David Woodhouse wrote:
> What I object to is the fact that it no longer supports the _normal_
> form of operation, where the network is a system-wide resource, set up
> automatically at boot time. I have to actually log in and enter a
> password now in order for my machine to connect to the network, and
> that's a serious regression.

I've maintained all along that if users and/or administrators wish to
delegate keys to all users of the system, that's quite acceptable.

What's _doesn't_ exist right now is a mechanism to store those keys in a
system-wide location, and to give those keys to NetworkManager on
demand.  Stuff we've tossed around:

1) GConf: either through mandatory/default settings, or a 'nobody'
user's GConf settings, a system-wide org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerInfo
service runs from bootup to shutdown.  When a user-session asks for the
service, the system-level one gives the service up.  It reacquires the
service when the user-level service drops.  It provides
default/system-wide settings to NetworkManager just like the
user-session one does.

2) Text files in /etc like we have now.  Haha.  No way.

3) Some other system-wide configuration framework.  Sure, as long as its
not text files in /etc like we have now.  The nice stuff about GConf and
everything else is that it's -structured- and easily accessed by a sane
API.  I don't want to write text-file parsing tools for every damn thing
that needs system-wide config access.

(1) has to happen anyway for power management too, how do you manage
power if nobody is logged in?  Again, system-wide settings and prefs.
But to keep a consistent architecture and not build different
system-settings parsing crap into every daemon, we have a nicer option
in the dbus-enabled world.

But then again, why can't these daemons that need network on boot start
_not_ needing network on bootup?  Why can't they gracefully fail when
they don't have network, and do whatever they do when the network shows
up?  Yeah, it's new to lots of people that a Linux system just might not
have networking 100% of the time, but that's the reality client-side,
and daemon developers have to suck it up and deal with it.

Dan