[libvirt] libvirt not wanting to read back its own interface XML

[Guido Günther]

Hi Marc,
On Sun, Oct 22, 2017 at 10:37:44AM +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
> Hi Guido,
> 
> I didn't mean to accuse Debian of doing a bad job with netcf.

I didn't read it like that either.

> 
> On Sun, Oct 22, 2017 at 09:26:31AM +0200, Guido Günther wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 02:41:31PM +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
> > > On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 01:37:45PM +0200, Michal Privoznik wrote:
> > > > Aha! the thing is, you're using netcf backend while I'm using the udev
> > > > one. This error message comes from netcf. It's a netcf's bug. CCing
> > > > Laine who should know more.
> > > 
> > > Where can I read up about the different backends available? Is it a
> > > compile-time setting or can I configure that on my system?
> > > 
> > > Actually, I'm doing the configuration outside of libvirt anyway (with
> > > systemd-networkd), I just want the interface to be in virt-manager's
> > > selection dropdown, so I don't care too much about netcf.
> > 
> > https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?archive=0;dist=unstable;ordering=normal;repeatmerged=0;src=netcf
> > 
> > doesn't look that bad. Not following includes is troublesome (#875762) but
> > shouldn't be too hard to fix. Can you file bugs for other issues you're
> > seeing? This would make it simpler to decide whether we disable netcf
> > support or fix the issues that are there.
> 
> It is just that I have configuring my networks in special ways for
> nearly two decades, using the "manual" method of ifupdown way before it
> was officially introduced into the Debian packages (#88948, sic!), and
> am therefore used to other packages doing network configuration not
> playing around pretty well on my systems.
> 
> And I have stopped using ifupdown entirely with jessie, and have
> migrated over to systemd-networkd. My expertise with current ifupdown is
> to limited to be of any use.
> 
> I would love to see systemd-networkd support for netcf, though.

That's https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=859850 and I
agree it would be nice but _please_ file bugs if you have netcf issues
so we can either fix them in Debian or switch to the udev backend by
default if we don't get around to.
Cheers,
 -- Guido