|
|
Log in / Subscribe / Register

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

[Posted September 18, 2012 by ris]

From:  Dennis Gilmore <dennis-AT-ausil.us>
To:  announce-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org, devel-announce-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org, test-announce-AT-lists.fedoraproject.org
Subject:  Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha!!
Date:  Tue, 18 Sep 2012 08:43:56 -0500
Message-ID:  <20120918084356.7a70aa2a@adria.ausil.us>
Archive‑link:  Article

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Hash: SHA1



The Fedora 18 "Spherical Cow" Alpha release is plumping up! This release 

offers a preview of some of the best free and open source technology 

currently under development. Model a glimpse of the future:



http://fedoraproject.org/get-prerelease



Already mooo-tivated to give F18 Alpha a try? Great! We still hope that 

you'll read onwards; there are fabulous features in this release you may 

want to know about, as well as important information regarding specific, 

common F18 Alpha installation issues and bugs, all of which are detailed 

in this release announcement.



*** What is the Alpha Release? ***



Fedora 18 adds many new and improved features for a variety of 

audiences. A small sample is included below; the full list of features 

for this release can be seen on the Fedora 18 Feature List, here:



http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FeatureList



= On the Desktop =

   * NetworkManager Hotspots improve the ability to use a computer's 

WiFi adapter to create a network hot spot.

   * The redesigned installation system adds flexibility to the 

installation process while simplifying the user interface.

   * Desktop updates galore: Gnome 3.6, KDE Plasma Workspace 4.9, Xfce 

4.10, Sugar 0.98, and the introduction of the MATE Desktop in Fedora.



= For sysadmins =

   * The Riak NoSQL database, a fault-tolerant and scalable database 

system, is included for the first time in Fedora 18.

   * Samba 4 adds SMB3 support and support for FreeIPA trusted domains.

   * Offline system updates adds support for installing OS packages at 

boot. This gives systems administrators the ability to upgrade important 

libraries in a controlled manner.

   * Fedora 18 will be able to easily join an Active Directory domain or 

FreeIPA realm.



= For developers =

   * The Python 3 stack is upgraded to version 3.3.

   * Rails is upgraded from version 3.0 to version 3.2.

   * Perl 5.16 adds Unicode 6.1 support.

   * Power7 optimized ppc64p7 is added as a supported platform for 

Fedora 18 packages.



= Cloud and Virtualization =

   * OpenShift Origin brings Platform as a Service (PaaS) infrastructure 

to Fedora.

   * Eucalyptus gives Fedora the ability to support private, 

AWS-compatible Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds.

   * Fedora 18 Alpha's OpenStack packages are synchronized with 

"Folsom," the OpenStack release due near the end of September.

   * Heat provides an API for orchestration of cloud applications using 

file- or web-based templates, enabling a standardized method for 

OpenStack users to launch applications in an OpenStack cloud. It is 

currently an OpenStack related project.

   * Virt Live Snapshots adds the ability to perform snapshots of QEMU 

and libvirt virtual machines without having to stop the guest.

   * The oVirt Engine is upgraded to version 3.1 and adds GUI tools.



*** Known Issues and Bugs ***



We know that many of you are moo-tivated to download and try the Alpha 

release of "Spherical Cow"; to help you avoid stepping into any sticky 

issues, we'd like to highlight a few specific issues, before you moooove 

on to the downloads page. Information about these, and other common 

bugs, including bug reports and workarounds for known issues where 

available, are detailed on the Common F18 Bugs page, as well as in the 

Alpha release notes; links to both pages are provided below.



* Utilizing automatic partitioning during installation will reformat all 

selected disks on which to install without any further warning; ALL 

EXISTING DATA ON THE DISKS WILL BE LOST. At this time, there is no 

option presented to use free space on the disks, or to resize existing 

partitions. A workaround solution exists.



* Some NVIDIA graphics adapters will have problems with the start or 

display of the login manager or the desktop. This will prevent the user 

from reaching a usable desktop, when booting the live image or an 

installed system. In these cases, the login manager and/or desktop may 

fail to appear at all, or may appear but with the cursor missing, and/or 

visual corruption issues.



* This release features a new user interface for the anaconda installer, 

which will significantly enhance the end-user installation experience. 

Known issues relating to the new installer user interface include:

   ** For non-graphical installations, a root password must be set to be 

able to login; for graphical installations, the first user should be set 

as an adminstrative user. This is currently the default setup during 

installation.

   ** There is no anaconda-based upgrade or preupgrade to F18 Alpha; if 

you must upgrade an installed system, you should use yum.

   ** The new installer user interface is still undergoing work; the 

Alpha release may not necessarily duplicate exactly the implementation 

seen in the Final release of Fedora 18 in November.



For more information, including information about other common and known 

bugs, tips on how to report bugs, and the official release schedule, 

please refer to the release notes:



http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_18_Alpha_release_notes



A shorter list of common bugs can be found here: 

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F18_bugs



*** Contributing ***



Great releases like Fedora 18 don't get made in a vacuum. We can't do it 

without you! Bug reports are especially helpful as we move from the 

theory to the applied physics. If you encounter any issues, please 

report them!



Fedora is a fantastic, friendly community, and we have many ways in 

which you can contribute, including Documentation, Marketing, Design, 

QA, Development, and more.



To learn how to help us, visit: http://join.fedoraproject.org/



Thank you, and we hope to see you in the Fedora Project!

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

Version: GnuPG v2.0.18 (GNU/Linux)



iEYEARECAAYFAlBYeqEACgkQkSxm47BaWfekAQCfYehJQ8EJzyXi0xgKL+iEn7oU

Q0YAmQEXe0VbHHjNkeG0Tgp5ERjqRI8m

=hZB/

-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-- 
announce mailing list
announce@lists.fedoraproject.org
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

to post comments

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 18, 2012 18:12 UTC (Tue) by thebluesgnr (guest, #37963) [Link] (38 responses)

The installer for this is beyond broken, do not use.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 18, 2012 18:34 UTC (Tue) by clumens (guest, #28542) [Link] (33 responses)

If you don't file bug reports with real data, you can't assume whatever you are seeing will ever be fixed.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 7:03 UTC (Wed) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link] (32 responses)

How will you feel if you spend time to test the pre-release versions and you found a feature missing and the anaconda team dismissed it as 'not a bug or wontfix' and moved ahead ignoring your bug reports?

F18 features:
There is not going to be a text install.
There is no packages customization during install.
You have to go back in the anaconda menu after you choose an option, sounds retarded.
The installer doesnt confirm before it wipes your hard disk.
The network scripts are not ready yet.
The time zone bugs are not fixed yet.
One can install the operating system without a root password.

The release team says its alpha ready. How did fedora fall to these levels?

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 14:26 UTC (Wed) by clumens (guest, #28542) [Link] (31 responses)

There will always be things people file that will end up as NOTABUG or WONTFIX. However, there will always be many more things people file that will be genuine bugs. Most of these will get fixed, some of them won't. Unreported bugs will never be fixed unless someone else is lucky enough to hit the same thing.

> There is not going to be a text install.

Incorrect.

> There is no packages customization during install.

Correct, but this has been explained at length elsewhere.

> You have to go back in the anaconda menu after you choose an option, sounds retarded.

Sounds like you've not tried it. The strings are a bit misleading on the Alpha, but that's fixed up afterwards. The work flow here should be much more streamlined, especially for people who only need to deal with a subset of the pages.

> The installer doesnt confirm before it wipes your hard disk.

Yeah, that's filed.

> The network scripts are not ready yet.

What do you mean? Low information statements like this mean we have nothing to go on for fixing.

> The time zone bugs are not fixed yet.

Again, what do you mean?

> One can install the operating system without a root password.

The plan here was that the first user would be set up as the "admin" via sudo and consolekit and the like, but the OS as a whole is just really not ready for this. So yes there are some corner cases where you can end up without a root password, but again that is being worked on.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 15:57 UTC (Wed) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link] (30 responses)

I think I didn't make myself clear.
As you said the whole thing was dicussed elsewhere when you replied to me in your second answer and I have the same answer to you as well. I will point you to the on-going thread on fedoraforum.org where no one from anaconda cared to visit.
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=1603763#po...

You are the one who have posted that there wont be a text mode first, but now I learn that the status has been changed now.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/NewInstallerUI#Re...
I stand corrected.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 15:59 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (29 responses)

Fedoraforum.org isn't an official support channel - should the Anaconda developers be reading Phoronix as well?

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 16:52 UTC (Wed) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link] (28 responses)

Yea, I know fedoraforum.org is not supported. But if you cared enough to see what users are experiencing with your work, you would have better feedback. Is that so hard ?

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 16:57 UTC (Wed) by krakensden (guest, #72039) [Link] (3 responses)

It's honestly an important point- there's a pretty ugly divide in the Linux desktop community between the great unwashed in the forums, and the developers on mailing lists.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 19:24 UTC (Wed) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link] (2 responses)

The solution is to have an official forum -- and then make the forum send notifications over rss, irc bots and email to the developers. That's what made the Krita forums usable for me as a developer, who doesn't have time to struggle with the forum software itself to keep up with postings, and the result is happy users, informed developers and lots of cool images in the gallery.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 19:30 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

notifications that require that the developer login to the forum and see what's new don't scale.

having the forms gate to mailing lists so that the developer can see the messages and respond directly works _much_ better.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 19:54 UTC (Wed) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

I don't know whether it would scale for others or not. It scales for me, but then, the krita forums remember my login, and there are only some dozen posts a day, right now. And I don't feel compelled to answer every forum post that passed by on irc. But in general, irc and rss notifications work for me. A mailing list gateway would be even better, but I don't have that. Just visiting the forum to check what's new -- no, that wouldn't work at all.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 17:04 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (23 responses)

I'm not sure how you're imagining this would work. There's any number of places that people could be talking about their experiences. Should the developers be checking all of them?

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 17:15 UTC (Wed) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link] (22 responses)

Well, if you have a forum which dicusses your work, its doesn't sound good if you are not willing to check it. You are replying at lwn.net, would it hurt if you checked fedoraforum?

Ubuntu, Archlinux, FreeBSD have their forums, devs listen and discuss what users have say about the work. Its not like they don't have a ML of their own.

Look how gnome 3.6 is going, they have killed nautilus in 3.6. The elite gnome devs don't listen to users and people make forks like nemo, cinnamon etc.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 17:20 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

There are lots of forums that discuss my work. I can't follow all of them. But I'm also not an Anaconda developer.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 17:24 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (20 responses)

Forums are great for users. Really awful for developers. It is really incredibly inefficient for any developer to sort through forum threads to provide answers. Everybody who has tried this including myself find it far more efficient and productive to focus ourselves to bugzilla and developer mailing list. This is unfortunate but just the reality of the situation. Fedoraforum.org has recognized this and has a rather prominent notice in the footer and as a stick post that it is only meant to be a end user forum.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 19:07 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (19 responses)

The answer to this is that we need for more forums to be tied in to mailing lists.

Right now there is a huge divide between the two, and while forums are great for quick fire-and-forget questions from users, they are horrible for anyone to try and follow in volume.

Baen Books http://bar.baen.com (registration required, but free) has configured FUDForum to tie in to both NNTP and e-mail, with the same content appearing in all three places.

Postgres has a presence on nabble where you can view the mailing lists as if they were web forums

http://postgresql.1045698.n5.nabble.com/PostgreSQL-f18437...
http://postgresql.1045698.n5.nabble.com/

the Baen approach is useing all free software (FUDforum, INN, Mailman with light customization).

The Postgres approach is using a closed-but-free hosting service

We really need for more organizations to take this sort of approach (and for more forum software to support it)

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 19:24 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (18 responses)

No, that works terribly. Forum and mailing list formatting and etiquette are entirely different and merging them together works badly - can you imagine how irritating mailing list threads consisting entirely of "bump" messages would be? Because I can, having been there.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 19:31 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (16 responses)

"bump" messages are a symptom of the forum not working because the needed people aren't reading it.

as for formatting and etiquette being entirely different, that depends on the mailing list and forums involved. In some cases they are, in other cases they are similar enough to live together.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 19:44 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (3 responses)

No, they're a symptom of the different UI in forums. Mailing lists are generally presented as a set of threads with any unread posts being highlighted. Forums are generally presented as the set of recently modified threads without any immediate visibility as to the posts within them. If you post to a forum there's a good chance that people will miss your post entirely simply because they're not checking the forum frequently enough. Different UI results in different cultural norms, and trying to merge the two leads to disasters.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 21:14 UTC (Wed) by rleigh (guest, #14622) [Link] (1 responses)

What I think I would like here is forum software which is a front-end to NNTP, so that the fora are in reality usenet groups, and can be efficiently accessed with a usenet reader, or via the "friendly" web front-end. This would, I think, provide the best of both worlds, both in terms of ease of access for users, and speedy for developers in keeping up to date with threads in all groups.

Google suggests that such things do exist, but I haven't seen one in practice personally.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 21:23 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

FUDForum can do this. This is what Baen uses for http://bar.baen.com

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 20, 2012 4:11 UTC (Thu) by tuna (guest, #44480) [Link]

Most forums (all I frequent) have the "Go to first post since I was here last" functionality.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 19:45 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (11 responses)

"bump" messages are a symptom of the forum not working because the needed people aren't reading it.

Or just of the combination "busy forum" + "needed people not having the same diurnal-rhythm distribution as the user base" + "impatient users".

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 21:06 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (10 responses)

Ok, change my statement to "aren't reading it frequently enough"

I still say it's a symptom of a problem, and if you have a lot of people bumping threads to fight for priority on the first page, you really need to figure out a better way to structure your forum.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 21:08 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (9 responses)

Sure, forums will work when gated to mailing lists if people are using the forum as if they were using a mailing list. But, typically, they're not and so they won't.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 21:13 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (8 responses)

I'm curious what ways you see people using forums that are incompatible with mailing lists?

yes, sometimes there are different norms (top posting vs bottom posting, HTML vs plain text, etc), but those variations exist between different mailing lists and between different forums as well, they aren't inherent to the message tool.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 21:17 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (7 responses)

The Ubuntu mailing lists were bidirectionally gated to the forums for a while. Feel free to go back and see how well that worked. A typical forum is culturally different to a typical mailing list, and you're not going to force either existing population into the cultural norms of the other.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 21:27 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (6 responses)

given that I know of one place where it is working, I disagree with the attitude that it's impossible.

There is enough variation in culture from mailing list to mailing list, and for forum to forum that I really question if they are so fundamentally incompatible (especially when nobody will bother to say what the differences are, just that they are so different that they can never get along)

I am not saying that there isn't going to be a need for some accommodation, but as noted elsewhere, if this makes it possible for the developers to participate in the forums where they didn't before, the value of getting a real response can overwhelm any inconvenience and friction from the different cultures.


Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 21:29 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (5 responses)

You know of one place where it works, in an entirely different type of community. I know of more than one place where it has failed, in almost identical communities. Which anecdote do you think is more relevant here?

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 22:03 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (4 responses)

when you say "it can't possibly work", all it takes is one example of it working to prove you wrong.

At that point the interesting discussion is around why it works in some situations and not in others, but as long as there's just a flat statement of "it can't work" that discussion is not yet taking place.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 23:25 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (3 responses)

"It can work in this entirely different context" is not useful information. "It has failed when it has been attempted in this context" is useful information. And while yes, we could have some sort of academic discussion as to why these communities are different, it would be entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 23:36 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

why are the contexts different? You are insisting that all the cases that you care about are different, but I don't see any fundamental reason for them being different.

Just because something didn't work well at some point in the past for some group of people doesn't make that thing a bad idea for that reason alone.

in both cases you have a small group of "important" people (developers for opensource stuff, authors for Baen) and a very large group of less "important" or less "clueful" people (users for opensource stuff, readers for Baen)

In both cases the less important people can help each other and get value from interacting with each other.

In both cases the value of a forum increases drastically if the "important" people interact with it, but web forums are horribly inefficient ways for people to keep up with everything.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 23:58 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (1 responses)

If you can't tell the difference between a community made up of science fiction enthusiasts who want to talk about books and one made up of random computer users who want to talk about why their computer doesn't work, I don't think there's any point in trying to discuss it.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 20, 2012 23:57 UTC (Thu) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]

I guess I'm another person who doesn't see the big difference you seem to see.

Authors : Readers
Developers : Users

Of course it isn't exactly the same thing but it is quite similar in many ways.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 19:58 UTC (Wed) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

Well, you wouldn't want to mix your regular mailing list with forum posts. But a separate mailing list with forum messages where you can answer new posts from your mailer, that should work pretty well.

In my experience, the OMG THE DEVELOPER ANSWERED MY POST AND HE IS NICE AND HUMAN reaction you get when answering a forum question totally overshadows any little etiquette differences there might be.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 1:30 UTC (Wed) by Ed_L. (guest, #24287) [Link] (2 responses)

* Utilizing automatic partitioning during installation will reformat all selected disks on which to install without any further warning; ALL EXISTING DATA ON THE DISKS WILL BE LOST. At this time, there is no option presented to use free space on the disks, or to resize existing partitions. A workaround solution exists.

* This release features a new user interface for the anaconda installer, which will significantly enhance the end-user installation experience. Known issues relating to the new installer user interface include:

Yet Another (allegedly) New! Improved! Anaconda Interface, This time to one that can blow away your data without the usual and complacently anticipated warning. Glad they suggest reading the entire release announcement before installing.

Fortunately, anymore there's little reason to install an alpha release on aught but a VM. Otherwise, I used to assign an alpha its own boot and root partitions, then make certain those were the *only* two partitions selected to the installer. I'd add my *real* /home to /etc/fstab only after successful install and update. Again fortunately, I rarely have need to install an alpha release -- or beta unless there's a new gotta-have version of gcc that for some reason I don't want to download and install separately.

However, I do usually download a LiveCD image and test basic graphics and network functionality from that. Unreported alpha bugs are rarely fixed for GA...

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 14:21 UTC (Wed) by clumens (guest, #28542) [Link] (1 responses)

There's not been a real anaconda UI update in years and years, so I really don't know what you're going on about with the "Yet Another (allegedly)" business.

Anyway this is an alpha, so yeah it's expected there will be situations where data loss can occur. That's why we suggest you read the announcements and test on machines (or VMs) which are throw away.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 20, 2012 2:28 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

A natural fact about humans is that they have long memories but not a good way to tell how long ago events happen if they do not deal with them all the time. So when talking about this release with various old-time users.. the response is always "AGAIN?" even if it was 4+ years since the last change. The memories that immediately came up were ones of all the previous changes and the brain processes it as something that just happened.

In other words, get used to the fact that every time you change something you will get this response.. in fact it will more likely be more vitriolic the longer the time since the last change and how critical it is to some once in a while task.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 20, 2012 19:47 UTC (Thu) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link]

It's good enough for alpha and NOOBS that I have had testing install have only complained about the back button which I myself dislike and the keyboard layout selection which now offers them to choose Icelandic,Icelandic (Dvorak),Icelandic ( Eliminate dead keys ),Icelandic (Macintosh),Icelandic (Sun Dead Keys) as opposed to just "Icelandic" like it used to.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 18, 2012 18:24 UTC (Tue) by krakensden (guest, #72039) [Link] (14 responses)

NM improvements are always interesting, and it will be interesting to see how big the grumpy population is, and how MATE is received.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 18, 2012 19:28 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (13 responses)

What I would like to see from NetworkManager is the ability to support, in some manner, the ability to have bridged interfaces, macvlans, or other type of those sorts of things.

Right now the best approach is to throw your scripts to do the admin-y type odd network configurations using the NetworkManager dispatcher. This in itself is not a terrible thing and is actually very useful... but...

What I've noticed is that while examining virtualization management solutions (ovirt or openstack type things) is that nobody actually knows anything about networkmanager or how to use it properly. If the something like that mentions network manager at all they say something along the lines of: 'turn it off as it is known to cause issues for some users'.

So what you end up with is each solution you run into has their own half-baked way to set up bridges and other things. I think that adding bridging support will go along way towards helping people kick 'must make custom scripts' syndrom when setting up rather mundane configurations.

Especially for Fedora.. the quicker they can get away from using ifup/ifcfg scripts and moving to using nmcli/keyfiles the better off it'll be.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 18, 2012 20:20 UTC (Tue) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (6 responses)

I'd like NM to grow a nice way to do bonded interfaces between wifi and ethernet. Having a setup with a failover bonding so the wifi takes over on the same IP when I disconnect the Ethernet is a great thing, but I haven't had that working since I last ran Gentoo in 2007.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 18, 2012 21:30 UTC (Tue) by blitzkrieg3 (guest, #57873) [Link] (3 responses)

The problem I see with this is that there is no way to know if both interfaces are on the same subnet.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 18, 2012 21:54 UTC (Tue) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link] (2 responses)

There are a couple of ways.

You could do an ARP probe to see if the DHCP server or gateway of one of the other connected devices was available. Or even ARP for the other interface IP.

You could just look at the DHCP server to see if the same one is available on both interfaces.

If the interface turns out to be on the same network go ahead and add it to the bond.

The ARP or DHCP probing would also be a good way to add locations to NetworkManager.

Or better yet, some kind of LocationManager that could use connected network information, WiFi scan results, BlueTooth, GPS, compass and/or inertial sensor data to track location.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 3:58 UTC (Wed) by ebiederm (subscriber, #35028) [Link] (1 responses)

The standard way to detect that bonding is ok, is to do lacp.

There are other valid cases where two interfaces on the same network are ok but 802.3ad let boths sides no you are bonded, and is specified to allow for auto-configuration of bonds.

There are other games you can play but you should start with 802.3ad.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 4:12 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]

I don't want a bond for sharing bandwidth, so it does not matter that the other side knows about it. I want the bond for fail-over only so that when the Ethernet disconnects it falls back to wireless. There's a mode for that in Linux.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 18, 2012 22:59 UTC (Tue) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (1 responses)

Does that actually *work* with most network setups? Seems unlikely to work with the standard configurations of most personal router configurations, let alone corporate networks in which wired and wireless typically connect to different infrastructures entirely.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 4:23 UTC (Wed) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]

Why would a personal router not let it work? It worked in 2007. The hard-wired Ethernet and the WiFi are on the same IP network. The router acts as a bridge.

And where I work, which is a corporation although small, we have a similar setup. In fact, I think we are using some ordinary Linksys consumer thing for the office.

With the bond in fail-over mode, when the bond detects that the primary link (in this case Ethernet) goes down it sends ARPs out on the second link (WiFi) to update the ARP tables of all the bridges, switches and interfaces sending it traffic.

So it may lose a packet or two but TCP/IP quickly recovers.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 18, 2012 20:26 UTC (Tue) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link] (3 responses)

Right now the best approach is to throw your scripts to do the admin-y type odd network configurations using the NetworkManager dispatcher.

Looking around... so you're talking about scripts in /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d, as documented in NetworkManager(8)?

Do you have any examples?

At testing events a few times a year I just turn off NetworkManager and configure stuff manually, but then it's always a pain going back and forth between the test network and the hotel where I want NetworkManager to do its usual thing without thinking about it....

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 18, 2012 21:03 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

> Looking around... so you're talking about scripts in /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d, as documented in NetworkManager(8)?

Yeah. That is how a administrator manually add functionality to NetworkManager. It's very similar in concept to 'init' scripts. Network Manager dispatcher will execute those scripts with a arguments to indicate the state of the interface and which interface it is.

I haven't figured out a good way to manage bridges that way yet. It's on my list of things to do. Right now I just tell Network Manager to leave certain interfaces alone by editing /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf. And then using ifcfg or rc scripts.

If I figure out a good way this evening then I'll post it.

I've typically used dispatcher in the past to connect to VPNs that don't have a compatibile plugin for network manager.

> At testing events a few times a year I just turn off NetworkManager and configure stuff manually, but then it's always a pain going back and forth between the test network and the hotel where I want NetworkManager to do its usual thing without thinking about it....

The trick I've found to configuring things "manually" with NetworkManager is to disable the 'native' ifcfg-rhat support for configurations and use keyfile configuration back end. This can be done by editing the NetworkManager.conf file.

The ifcfg support that NM has is subtly different, and I think limited, compared with the the ifcfg support that exists when using the old Redhat-style scripts with NetworkManager turned off. So I hate it. It's difficult to follow documentation and edit ifcfg scripts in a compatible way.

However /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/ keyfiles provide a ini style configuration method that is fairly easy to wrap your head around if you have examples to go off of. NetworkManager monitors that directory for changes and will automatically implement changes when you exit out of your editor. Copying a config to it will turn on that config, moving it away with disable it. I think that Arch Linux and Gentoo provides decent documentation. If you disable ifcfg and use keyfiles then NM will generate configs that you can later go on and edit.

The settings that are available can be found at:
http://projects.gnome.org/NetworkManager/developers/api/0...

Which is a pain in the ass to find.

The nmcli provides the most useful command line tool for it that I know of. It's especially useful if you want to connect to wifi with just the command line.

That brings me to wishing for better documentation. Most of this stuff exists in various forms, but it's difficult to piece together.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 17:03 UTC (Wed) by krakensden (guest, #72039) [Link]

This is the first time I've ever gotten a lead on how to do *anything* with NM on a server. I've bookmarked the page in the vain hope that the next time I need to set things up I'll get back here.

You should blog this or something.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 20, 2012 3:19 UTC (Thu) by sciurus (guest, #58832) [Link]

"That brings me to wishing for better documentation. Most of this stuff exists in various forms, but it's difficult to piece together."

Agreed. I gave up on NetworkManger in part because of this. I was a happy user when NetworkManager worked, but I was completely befuddled about what to do when it didn't.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 18, 2012 20:52 UTC (Tue) by Frej (guest, #4165) [Link] (1 responses)

Seems to be in already?
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/NMEnterpriseNetwor...

Can't say if it actually is.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 17:29 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

It can do some things like bonding, although I haven't figured this out yet.

But I don't think it has bridges.

So far the best way I can find to use NM along with bridges is have NM ignore the interface you want to bridge and use ifcfg scripts to manage it since they support bridging.

If you put "no-auto-default=*" in the 'main' section of NetworkManager.conf that will prevent NetworkManager from making those pesky 'Wired Connections 1' type things.

The only thing bad about this is that NM will periodically overwrite /etc/resolv.conf with it's own settings, which if you do not have any then it will make it effectively blank. This is irritating.

I am a bit disappointed, to be honest.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 18, 2012 19:13 UTC (Tue) by hpa (guest, #48575) [Link] (8 responses)

They should have roundly milked this one for more puns.

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 9:45 UTC (Wed) by MKesper (subscriber, #38539) [Link] (1 responses) 

 ______
< MOO! >
 ------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

Announcing the release of Fedora 18 Alpha

Posted Sep 19, 2012 11:39 UTC (Wed) by cladisch (✭ supporter ✭, #50193) [Link]

 __________________
< made with cowsay >
 ------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

Puns

Posted Sep 19, 2012 16:29 UTC (Wed) by skitching (guest, #36856) [Link] (5 responses)

I suspect Spherical Cow will be an unstable release :-)

Puns

Posted Sep 19, 2012 16:48 UTC (Wed) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] (1 responses)

I suspect Spherical Cow will be an unstable release :-)

Actually, it will be absolutely flawless. In theory. Give or take a few real-world quirks that we're going to disregard for the sake of illustration at hand.

Puns

Posted Sep 21, 2012 16:34 UTC (Fri) by zlynx (guest, #2285) [Link]

It should be great for education. Especially physics classes.

Puns

Posted Sep 19, 2012 16:51 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

with the smallest possible attack surface.

Puns

Posted Sep 20, 2012 1:31 UTC (Thu) by malcolmt (guest, #65441) [Link] (1 responses)

The lack of edge cases is the real benefit.

Puns

Posted Sep 20, 2012 6:42 UTC (Thu) by skitching (guest, #36856) [Link]

:-)

Maybe it's a smoooth transition to F18 from other distros?

The economic crises has affected Fedora too - this release has suffered from inflation.


Copyright © 2012, Eklektix, Inc.
Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds