NetworkManager 1.0 Released After Ten Years Development

An anonymous reader writes: After ten years of development focused on improving and simplifying Linux networking, NetworkManager 1.0 was released. NetworkManager 1.0 brings many features including an increasingly modernized client library, improved command-line support, a lightweight internal DHCP client, better Bluetooth support, VPN enhancements, WWAN IPv6 support, and other features.

Comments

NetworkManager

[NotInHere]

One of the few unix command line tools whose command begins with a major letter.

Re:NetworkManager

[Anonymous Coward]

You can control NetworkManager from the commandline, but most people are familiar with its GUI.

Re:NetworkManager

[kthreadd]

Modern NetworkManager releases also include a handy tool called nmtui which is basically the GUI implemented in curses. Nmcli can sometimes be a bit unintuitive so it's a good thing to have around.

Re:NetworkManager

[Eric Green]

Yes, NetworkManager should be fine on most servers. Unless you want to use network bonding. And VLANs. And bridges. Nevermind bridged VLAN's (yes, those are a thing) on top of 802.3Ad bonds. And ... and... well, 90% of the other functionality that is offered by the Linux networking stack. NetworkManager works fine for managing the 10% of the network stack that is used 90% of the time. For the other 10% of the time, it is an abortion that should be taken out back of the barn and shot like a rabid dog. And this other 10% that NetworkManager won't do is 99% of why people pay me big bucks to make Linux do what they need it to do, since you will not get high performance networking out of a server using the limited functionality provided by NetworkManager. As in, the servers I work with generally have at least half a dozen gigabit NICs and two 10Gbit NIC's. NetworkManager won't get me 1/10th of what I need to put these servers into the midst of a large network for use in server consolidation, and is utterly useless once we start talking about Open vSwitch and other such SDN components.

So sure, if you're a sandwich shop putting a $500 server under the cash register, or you are a teenage college student setting up a video sharing network for your bro's in the flop house you board in, NetworkManager will work fine for you. For those of us doing anything more complex, it is a useless abomination and the first thing done when bringing up a new server image is "chkconfig NetworkManager off ; service NetworkManager stop". (Or the AbominationD equivalents thereof).

Re:NetworkManager

[fisted]

One of the few unix command line tools whose command begins with a major letter.

Sorry, but there's nothing unix about NetworkManager.

Re:NetworkManager

[Antique Geekmeister]

> All you have to know about the NetworkManager abortion is that you can disable the service and remove the packag

It's unfortunately built into most installers toolkits, so it's difficult to avoid completel, and more tools have unnecessary dependencies on it. So deleting it can lead to re-installing it

With RHEL based sysysstems, at least, the simplest way to block it is to put "NM_CONTROLLED=no" in the "/etc/sysconfig/network. That helps ensure it stays disabled, until, and unless you specifically select it for any network port..

Re:NetworkManager

[WoodstockJeff]

"With RHEL based sysysstems, at least, the simplest way to block it is to put "NM_CONTROLLED=no" in the "/etc/sysconfig/network. That helps ensure it stays disabled, until, and unless you specifically select it for any network port.."

If NM is installed, even telling it to not control a network interface is insufficient to keep it from interfering with that interface. Just a week ago, I installed a new NIC in a server, configured it manually with NM told to leave it alone. 12 hours later, the server disappeared from the network. It didn't crash, it just disconnected, because NM decided to take over control of the NIC.

Why? Because I had not put the MAC address into the configuration. Seems NM will ignore NM_CONTROLLED=no if you don't tell it the MAC address. So my fixed-IP server suddenly became a dynamic-IP workstation, with DNS pointing to the wrong network and a different gateway.

So, no, I'm not going to leave NM installed on any machine that is NOT moving around the country using WiFi.

mask NM

[Anonymous Coward]

The most important feature is that it can be disabled, masked and unistalled without loosing functionality, as oppposed to other new TM things that I can't get rid of that easily

Re:what's wrong with ifconfig?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, you can also do it via cli (with more tools than just those you mentioned), but, do you remember all the steps?

Why remember them? Dump the commands into a script and just run it.

Can you automate it?

No, of course not, because command line tools are the absolute worst for automation. </sarcasm>

That said, if you're dealing with wireless, I'd suggest using wicd instead of either. Less shitty than NetworkManager, less complicated than command line, and it has multiple front-ends including gtk, qt, ncurses, and CLI. I started using it years ago because NM tended to break horribly and every few updates it would lose the ability to connect to hidden APs. Meanwhile, has always "just worked" and has been completely forgettable, which is probably the best compliment that kind of software can earn.