systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 26, 2012 10:07 UTC (Thu) by cas (guest, #52554)
In reply to: systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits by drag
Parent article: Shuttleworth: Quality has a new name

That's the first time i've ever seen NetworkManager accused of having an overabundance of capabilities.

I guess there must be leakage from some parallel universe where NM isn't a pile of worthless crap that makes it impossible to have anything but the most basic network configuration.

NM is OK (as in tolerable) on laptops and desktop machines where all you want is a dhcp assigned IP and a simple GUI to configure access to your wireless AP.

For anything else, it's a complete PITA that actively prevents you from getting your network working.

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 26, 2012 10:31 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (5 responses)

Hi, this is the second message I see from you. If you want to be taken seriously, suggest to not use phrasings like "pile of worthless crap". Thanks.

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 26, 2012 10:49 UTC (Thu) by cas (guest, #52554) [Link] (4 responses)

I can think of no compelling reason for me to care in the slightest whether you take me seriously or not. Feel free to try to convince me that your opinion should be worth something to me. It won't be easy.

As for Network Manager, given that it is a steaming pile of worthless crap, I have no hesitation in describing it as such.

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 26, 2012 11:58 UTC (Thu) by ean5533 (guest, #69480) [Link]

It's not just bkor's opinion you should care about -- it's the entire LWN community that will take you less seriously. Perhaps you don't care about anyone's opinion, but if that's the case, then why are you here?

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 26, 2012 22:18 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (2 responses)

You're turning things around. I already stated that the way you communicate is not very nice. As such, why are you asking me to convince you? I fail to see the logic in this. Of course it's your choice to continue communicating in the same way (eventhough I'd appreciate some more strict moderation on LWN).

Some "communities" (as far as LWN is a community) are different; on e.g. GNOME you can disagree/agree as much as you want, but it is not a free for all.

Suggest saying the same as you do here in real life / conferences such as GUADEC/FOSDEM. You'll see that some communication methods just don't get you much further.

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 27, 2012 2:36 UTC (Fri) by cas (guest, #52554) [Link] (1 responses)

1. lecturing people because they don't live up to or believe in YOUR PERSONAL IDIOSYNCRATIC PREFERENCES is offensive and annoying.

If you don't like me saying that "software package X is crap, and here are some of the reasons why" then DON'T READ ANYTHING I POST, but don't insist that I conform to YOUR standards as if they are some universal objective standard of correct behaviour.

2. it is you who are turning things around. you said words to the effect of "be nice as i define it or i won't listen to you" - this is a repulsively passive-aggressive form of attempted censorship. I said "why should i care if you listen to me or not?". you still haven't provided any reason why i should care and seem to be going out of your way to provide reasons why i shouldn't.

3. Don't bother me again with this tedious garbage. i'm not interested.

some days i really wish forums like this had a killfile.

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 27, 2012 2:43 UTC (Fri) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link]

"some days i really wish forums like this had a killfile."
It does. You're now in it.

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 26, 2012 19:08 UTC (Thu) by jimparis (guest, #38647) [Link] (14 responses)

> I guess there must be leakage from some parallel universe where NM isn't a pile of worthless crap that makes it impossible to have anything but the most basic network configuration.

I suspect you're basing that on old versions of NM. When it started, it was how you describe, capable of only very basic network configuration. But many more features have been added since then. For example, I've recently used it on a remote data-capture system to:
- configure one wired port with a static IP
- independently, connect to a 3G network via USB modem
- run an OpenVPN tunnel over that 3G network
Combined with a script that lightly poked around with "nmcli con" to reconnect if the 3G seemed to be stuck, it was by far the easiest way to deal with the cell phone and VPN setup.

I also occasionally plug my cell phone into my laptop, let NM connect to the Internet through it, and then tell NM to run a DHCP server on my wired connection and share the connection there.

Those cases might not be useful for you, but I think it's still far improved from "very basic network configuration". In general, I've found that if NM _does_ support a particular configuration, it goes one
step further and makes that configuration _easy_.

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 26, 2012 19:15 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (5 responses)

> I've found that if NM _does_ support a particular configuration, it goes one step further and makes that configuration _easy_.

I think this sums up the issue almost completely.

_IF_ it supports the configuration, it makes it easy for a desktop user to use it.

but if it doesn't support that configuration, or if you aren't a desktop user (i.e. server, embedded), then it is a problem.

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 26, 2012 20:05 UTC (Thu) by jimparis (guest, #38647) [Link]

>_IF_ it supports the configuration, it makes it easy for a desktop user to use it.

> but if it doesn't support that configuration, or if you aren't a desktop user (i.e. server, embedded), then it is a problem.

I agree that you're basically out of luck if it doesn't support your configuration. But those situations are getting more and more rare in my experience.

Regarding "embedded", I disagree. The main example I gave was essentially an embedded system -- a laptop hooked up to data-capture equipment shoved in an inaccessible machine room somewhere. And in that case, I purposely installed and used network-manager because it supported what I needed (multiple interfaces, 3G modem, OpenVPN). Tweaking pppd and its config for just the 3G would have been quite a pain in comparison.

For "server", I'd still tend to agree -- having multiple bridged and bonded network interfaces in separate zones is, AFAIK, still not something NM would be helpful for.

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 27, 2012 2:42 UTC (Fri) by cas (guest, #52554) [Link] (3 responses)

this is *exactly* the problem with NM.

You can do what is pre-programmed into it very easily. the catch is that you can *ONLY* do what is pre-programmed into it, and you can not use a combination of NM for the simple stuff plus your own hand-crafted config for the more complex / non-preprogrammed stuff.

If you could convince NM to leave your hand-crafted stuff alone and not break your network configuration because it doesn't understand it, then it would merely be a somewhat useful but quite limited tool. But you can't do that. which makes it a pile of worthless crap.

(and, btw, the most recent version of NM i tested was whatever was in debian sid about a month ago. i used it for a few days until it interfered with stuff i needed to do to get kvm running on my new workstation)

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 27, 2012 12:36 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (2 responses)

you can not use a combination of NM for the simple stuff plus your own hand-crafted config for the more complex / non-preprogrammed stuff.

A cursory examination of a nearby Ubuntu 10.04 system gives me the impression that NetworkManager can be configured to only touch the interfaces the administrator wants it to touch, which means that at least some cases satisfying your description are viable (obviously there are plenty that are not).

I also note that the existence of network configurations which it is reasonable to desire and which NetworkManager cannot be coerced into understanding (or at least into not breaking) is clearly a bug in NetworkManager which should be reported through the appropriate channels.

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 27, 2012 16:03 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

> I also note that the existence of network configurations which it is reasonable to desire and which NetworkManager cannot be coerced into understanding (or at least into not breaking) is clearly a bug in NetworkManager which should be reported through the appropriate channels.

The problem is how you define "reasonable to desire"

there are an incredible number of situations where the right thing to do in a particular situation is not something that would be considered sane in most other situations. Listing all these special cases in a tool like NM would confuse users and cause them to select the wrong thing.

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 27, 2012 16:14 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

NetworkManager, the daemon, is not nm-connection-editor, the GUI tool for manipulating the daemon's configuration.

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 27, 2012 3:33 UTC (Fri) by shemminger (subscriber, #5739) [Link] (7 responses)

The good and the bad of NM. NM makes setting up VPN's etc on my laptop easy, but it interferes horribly when doing anything moderately serverish like setting up VLAN's, bridging, bonding, fiddling with devices. I.e all the things you hope a network developer tests. So yes for users it's great but for developers it is a nuisance.

I fear systemd will end up the same way. Kind of like the Apple IOS, when everything works its wonderful, but when you want to develop hardware support or run another OS, or have a hardware error, it just says "your not worthy" and spits in your face.

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 27, 2012 22:06 UTC (Fri) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (6 responses)

Setting up the VPN is easy, but NM fails at something I used to have scripts doing: getting name service set properly.

I *used* to run a caching named with forwarding servers defined for the internal nameservers on remote networks. The scripts would set the reference to the server and reconfig named.

To do the same thing on NetworkManager I'd have to write a plugin. Considering the state of other NM plugins, the NM authors have zero concern for API compatibility and therefore I'd also have to rewrite the code every six months or so.

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 27, 2012 22:14 UTC (Fri) by jimparis (guest, #38647) [Link] (5 responses)

A plugin might be overkill. Is putting your scripts in /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d not sufficient? It seems that you would just have to check that the interface coming up is your VPN, and then do your named config magic as usual.

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 28, 2012 1:45 UTC (Sat) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (1 responses)

by plugin do you mean a script networkmanager's dispatcher.d facilility that fires on network up/down?

i just want to be clear as to what you have attempted.

-jef

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 28, 2012 2:29 UTC (Sat) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

replying to myself... somehow i punched the wrong comment to reply to and i was too late to be relevant anyways. Please ignore me.. just this once.

-jef

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 28, 2012 21:02 UTC (Sat) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (2 responses)

I just looked around at the man pages and http://live.gnome.org/NetworkManager

Do you realize the dispatch stuff isn't documented anywhere?

Besides that, NM makes it quite difficult to use DHCP and still point the DNS at ::1.

Which seems to be why someone wrote the dns=plugin stuff that is in the NetworkManager configuration file.

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted Apr 29, 2012 0:44 UTC (Sun) by jimparis (guest, #38647) [Link] (1 responses)

> Do you realize the dispatch stuff isn't documented anywhere?

On my system, it's the majority of the "Description" section in "man networkmanager". See http://linux.die.net/man/8/networkmanager

> Besides that, NM makes it quite difficult to use DHCP and still point the DNS at ::1.

Under your IPv4 or IPv6 settings tab, just set the "method" to "Automatic (DHCP) addresses only" or "Automatic, addresses only". Then fill in the DNS servers yourself.

systemd & the tightly couple core band vs a world of many inits

Posted May 1, 2012 6:50 UTC (Tue) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]

Hmm. Sure enough, it is there in the Description section. I never saw it. I probably skipped Description in order to get to the good stuff. It seems to me that most man pages put a description in Description and then the actually useful information in other sections.

Or it is possible that I was logged into a CentOS 5 system when I ran the man command. NetworkManager 0.7 (the RHEL 5 version) has a dispatcher.d directory, but nothing in the man page about it. And this time I double-checked.