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Networking Open Source Software Upgrades Linux

NetworkManager 1.0 Released After Ten Years Development 164

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.
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NetworkManager 1.0 Released After Ten Years Development

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  • NetworkManager (Score:5, Informative)

    by NotInHere ( 3654617 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @12:16AM (#48657709)

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

    • by Anonymous Coward

      NetworkManager 2.0 will debut in the year of the Linux desktop.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      why does it have a DHCP client? Will it still be possible to configure things manually from the command line, or do I always need a desktop environment now to connect to a wireless ethernet? Why isn't it just a thin wrapper on systemd?

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

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

      • by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @01:01AM (#48657875) Journal

        Why isn't it just a thin wrapper on systemd?

        Oh, that's cold, man!

      • Re:NetworkManager (Score:5, Insightful)

        by fnj ( 64210 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @01:06AM (#48657895)

        All you have to know about the NetworkManager abortion is that you can disable the service and remove the package. Then the operating system's own network configuration files, dhclient and everything, like, actually work as intended and documented.

        • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @02:44AM (#48658251)

          Yes and then you just use the commandline to handle failover of network interfa.... eh no.
          Well you can use the commandline to automate the connection to preferred wireles.... no?
          What about moving between netwo...

          Ahh fuck it I'm re-installing NetworkManager. A turd of a system service with a turd of a user interface is better than busting open the command line every time I do something as mind mindbogglingly complicated on my laptop as plugging in a network cable.

          It may have its warts, but it does what it says on the box. It simplifies network management in a time where networks are not a single solid stable connection to the host. You wouldn't want it on a server, but you wouldn't want to be without it on pretty much any other use case.

          • You wouldn't want it on a server, but you wouldn't want to be without it on pretty much any other use case.

            NetworkManager should be fine on most servers. While the project used to be focused on desktops and laptops there's nothing non-serverish about it.

            • Re:NetworkManager (Score:5, Informative)

              by Eric Green ( 627 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @04:23AM (#48658503) Homepage

              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).

              • At least in CentOS and RHEL 7, NetworkManager does VLANs and Bonding and bridges in about 2 clicks. Add interface, choose bonding | VLAN | bridge, and go.

                bridged VLAN's (yes, those are a thing)

                Set up your VLAN interfaces, bridge them. Not seeing the issue.

                And ... and... well, 90% of the other functionality that is offered by the Linux networking stack.

                90% of the other functionality isnt relevant 90% of the time. The point of a GUI is to offer the most common options, and from my usage of NM, it does that admirably.

                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.

                What about a network engineer who has better things to do than spend more time researching the syntax for setting up tagging o

                • Everything you needed to know about configuring an interface you could find with 'less /usr/share/doc/iniscripts*/sysconfig.txt', better than any network device where the configuration cli's built-in help is only useful if you've completed 3 weeks of expensive training courses.

                  Since about RHEL4, anaconda would have populated the HWADDR variables so devices don't get renamed, although the new approach in udev is probably better.

                  NetworkManager (in the stable versions of the distros I run) seems to still be in

              • It's ok for desktops with 1 nic some times. Not so much for any other scenario.

                Openstack needs it turned off. As long as I can remove the package and manually set up the network, i'm ok.

                There are too many network thing it breaks and too few it fixes.

            • It *should* be fine. But I'm wondering what benefit it brings? NetworkManager was born from a need to simplify network management and automate handovers between networks. These aren't typical scenarios on a server which likely has a fixed network connection and a fixed network setup.

          • It may have its warts, but it does what it says on the box.

            It absolutely does not do what it "says on the box". I have _never_ had a Linux box have usable networking when NetworkManager was installed. God that piece of crap needs to burn in hell. Forever. It is the most horrible abortion I have seen attached to a Linux box. At least PulseAudio, the next worst abortion works sometimes, now. NetworkManager never works.

        • Re:NetworkManager (Score:4, Informative)

          by Antique Geekmeister ( 740220 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @08:33AM (#48659171)

          > 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..

          • Please forgive my typos in that post: I'm afraid my RSI is acting up today with a new keyboard layout.

          • Re:NetworkManager (Score:5, Informative)

            by WoodstockJeff ( 568111 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @10:18AM (#48659587) Homepage

            "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.

      • by skids ( 119237 )

        My best guess as to why they would mess with that is they wanted to fix a few issues where the standalone DHCP clients were not re-negotiating when they needed to, and of course they wanted to do it over DBUS. The alternative fix would have been to work with DHCP client projects/maintainers to add pluggable DBUS control interfaces to those, but when given the choice between that and mission creep, mission creep wins these days. Unless they just decided to use the systemd DHCP client they put in there for u

    • In that case, what's minor letter?
    • nmcli, nmtui, nm-tool all use small letters.

    • Re:NetworkManager (Score:4, Informative)

      by fisted ( 2295862 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @05:27AM (#48658669)

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

      Sorry, but there's nothing unix about NetworkManager.

    • Sure about UNIX? It's a Linux tool, not UNIX.
    • Here's a command you can use to get all those commands :
      bash -c "compgen -c | grep ^[A-Z] | sort"

      On my system, I get :
      ControlPanel, GET, GMT, HEAD, Mail, MAKEDEV, ModemManager, NetworkManager, POST, R, Rscript, VBoxBalloonCtrl, VBoxClient, VBoxControl, VBoxHeadless, VBoxManage, VBoxSDL, VBoxService, VirtualBox, X, Xephyr, Xorg

      • by paulatz ( 744216 )
        You still have MAKEDEV? I have not seen it in ages
      • by armanox ( 826486 )
        On UNIX Systems I get quite the response too:

        (Slashdot filters won't let me post the output from my IRIX system.  I get a " Filter error: That's an awful long string of letters there." Fuck you Dice.)

        -bash-3.2$ uname -a
        SunOS new-host 5.10 Generic_147440-01 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Blade-1500
        bash-3.2$ bash -c "compgen -c | grep ^[A-Z] | sort"
        CC
        CCadmin
        ControlPanel
        DBMirror.pl
        HtmlConverter
        Mail
        TIMEZONE
        -bash-3.2$
      • by armanox ( 826486 )
        See my post here [google.com] for a list of capital letter commands found on various Unix systems (AIX, IRIX, Fedora Linux, OS X, and Solaris) since Slashdot's filters won't let me post it here....
      • $ bash -c "compgen -c | grep ^[A-Z] | wc -l"
        31
        $ bash -c "compgen -c | grep ^[a-z] | wc -l"
        5893

          1% is few for me.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Really, why do we need anything more than ifconfig and ethtool?

    • by Narcocide ( 102829 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @12:41AM (#48657799) Homepage

      Those are too simple and reliable. For Linux to compete with mainstream operating systems it needs more complexity and more bugs.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        So systemd will be bundling Network Manager?

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Narcocide ( 102829 )

          Probably, and probably also pulseaudio.

          • by nyet ( 19118 )

            Don't forget avahi, which reliably causes shutdown to take o^n time (vs number of network interfaces and ipaliases) to shut down

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          So systemd will be bundling Network Manager?

          I don't know if it's an out-and-out requirement, but the two packages are very clearly in the same camp.

          I stay *far* away from systemd, Network Manager, and PulseAudio. I'm trying to avoid using things like udisks, upower, and Pol(icy)?Kit.

          captcha: crimes

    • by hobarrera ( 2008506 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @03:21AM (#48658345) Homepage

      On Linux? To connect to WPA2 networks (including WPA2+802.1X). That's an everyday scenario for a pretty much every laptop user.

      Sure, you can also do it via cli (with more tools than just those you mentioned), but, do you remember all the steps? Can you teach them to your mum? Can you automate it?

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by 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 [wikipedia.org] 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 co

      • On Linux? To connect to WPA2 networks (including WPA2+802.1X). That's an everyday scenario for a pretty much every laptop user.

        Sure, you can also do it via cli (with more tools than just those you mentioned), but, do you remember all the steps? Can you teach them to your mum? Can you automate it?

        Mandriva/Mageia have net_applet, which is capable of browsing WiFi networks, configuring wpa_supplicant correctly (including access-point roaming), to the point where the normal 'network service' could (depending on your configuration choices) connect to WiFi during boot (before a user is logged in), and be useable for average users.

        This was first a useable solution in about 2005, and only stopped working perfectly with the migration to systemd (it still works better than NetworkManager in some respects, bu

    • Really, why do we need anything more than ifconfig and ethtool?

      The wireless tools complicate everything. Otherwise? Yes. I'd just edit the interface descriptions in /etc/network/interfaces ...

    • For desktop users.
      Most "not power" user simply want their computer to access "the internet" and don't care much about anything in between. NetworkManager does just that: plug the ethernet, you get a working connection. Input a wifi password in a simple, straighforward input dialog, and it works.
      I don't know if it was designed explicitely for this usage, but it work wonderfully there. In other scenarios... not so good. On a dev system, or a server, you'll want to remove it. Bet let's not forget the desktop
      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        On a dev system, or a server, you'll want to remove it. Bet let's not forget the desktop users :)

        And that's really the problem with Linux. It's a great server OS - but in the end, as a desktop OS it just stinks because all the developers scream when you try to "complicate" matters using tools like systemd, NetworkManager, PulseAudio which are essential to make a modern desktop OS.

        For networking you need to consider the mobile use case - home user is at home, and firewall is set up to allow services so they

    • For VPN support and dynamic network changes, especially with wifi based access.

    • Really, why do we need anything more than ifconfig and ethtool?

      Ask RedHat since they deemed them not good enough to be used in RHEL anymore. ip is the new hotness.

      • by mvdwege ( 243851 )

        If you consider ip to be the new hotness, then you are dating yourself as just another *buntu script kiddie.

    • ifconfig doesnt persist changes. Thats also not made obvious to the unfamiliar.

      Gotchas like that are why you need NetworkManager.

  • apt-get remove ... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    So, I want dnsmasq dynamically configured to use special name servers, in addition to and not in lieu of my regular name servers, when, and only when, a certain openvpn tunnel is active, as opposed to other openvpn tunnels I also have. Is this, after a decade of work, feasible using NetworkManager's normal built-in GUI interface? Or does it still cater to only straightforward DHCP wired and wireless use cases, ignoring anything move involved, as it has always done?

    I thought so.

    Dear distro makers; continue

    • So, I want dnsmasq dynamically configured to use special name servers, in addition to and not in lieu of my regular name servers, when, and only when, a certain openvpn tunnel is active, as opposed to other openvpn tunnels I also have. Is this, after a decade of work, feasible using NetworkManager's normal built-in GUI interface?

      As far as I can tell, you can specify "Additional DNS servers" for one particular VPN, at least in the version of NM included with Xubuntu 14.04 LTS.

      1. Network Manager > VPN Connections > Configure VPN
      2. Click Add
      3. Connection type: PPTP, then click Create
      4. After configuring everything else, under IPv4 Settings, make sure Method is set to "Automatic (VPN)" and not "Automatic (VPN) addresses only", and then enter an IP in Additional DNS servers.

      When you follow these steps, what happens differently from what you

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Many years from now, when I have reason to replace my working configurations in the normal course of upgrades, I'll give NM another try and let you know.

        I note, however, that you cite PPTP instead of OpenVPN. Is this "Additional DNS servers" entry exclusive to PPTP?

        Looking in on my configuration, I see that the additional DNS servers added to dnsmasq while a certain tunnel is active are used only for queries that match specific domains. All others queries are sent to the "normal" servers. Why might this

        • by SpzToid ( 869795 )

          https://help.ubuntu.com/commun... [ubuntu.com]

          Network Manager VPN support is based on a plug-in system. If you need VPN support via network manager you have to install one of the following packages:


          network-manager-openvpn
          network-manager-vpnc
          network-manager-openconnect

          The network-manager-pptp plugin is installed by default.

          On GNOME, you also need to install the -gnome packages for the VPN plugin you choose:


          network-manager-openvpn-gnome
          network-manager-vpnc-gnome
          network-manager-openconnect-gnome

          Your OpenVPN configuration

  • NM has been great over the past 2-3 years, at least as for my usage with KDE. Before that it was pretty unstable in my experience. Not sure what'll change (if anything, too lazy to read the changelog) with the coming update, but I'm sure I'll have it within the week since I run Arch.

    • Ran Debian with NM and KDE for the last couple of years as well. Purged it recently in order to remove systemd (NM depends on PolKit which depends on pam-systemd for login session management), and replaced it with WICD.

      WiCD is not quite as smooth as NM for usb modems, but for wifi and wired ethernet, it does the job.

      • (And I'm working on making the usb modem use cases work more smoothly...)

      • Yeah, I especially like the ease of the OpenVPN support (as well as the PPTP support). Makes configuring my work and home vpn trivial -- not that it wasn't before, but it's nice to have all the networking stuff in the same seamless GUI tool.

  • mask NM (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @12:44AM (#48657813)

    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

    • by skids ( 119237 )

      Yes, it has been easier in general to move out of the way than some of the other desktop junk. Some of the automated editing of config files was annoying but at least how to kick it off an interface was easy to find and no other applications were so tangled up with it that they got cranky without it running, unlike avahi which always causes error message spew everywhere when it is down and over the years has been a game of whack-a-mole to keep it killed what with all the different ways it got started.

      In ge

    • masked and uninstalled without loosing functionality

      Except for the functionality which it provides. Something not interesting to neckbeards but critical to about every other year of Linux on desktop user.

      • I don't think the OP was making that point. I think he was saying that it's not so tightly coupled with everything else that it can't be removed without losing all kinds of unrelated functionality. I think it was a reference to the systemd fiasco.

  • Never heard of it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @12:58AM (#48657861)

    And I have been a constant Linux user since 1994. This cannot be too important.

    • by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @01:22AM (#48657943)

      The best software does its job quietly and doesn't need a bunch of attention from the user, allowing your to do your actual work.
      Something that seems to be lost on the makers of many other software projects, OSS and commercial.

      • by Kjella ( 173770 )

        The best software does its job quietly and doesn't need a bunch of attention from the user, allowing you to do your actual work. Something that seems to be lost on the makers of many other software projects, OSS and commercial.

        Really? Seems to me Microsoft does a wonderful job, considering how many of their users don't know a thing about their computer.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Not applicable to me, as I always configure my networks manually via /etc/network/interfaces. You know, like people that know what they are doing...

    • by Anonymous Coward

      And I have been a constant Linux user since 1994. This cannot be too important.

      You've probably never hear of it because NetworkManager is quite superfluous in Linux.

      TFS says:

      After ten years of development focused on improving and simplifying Linux networking, NetworkManager 1.0 was released.

      It's hard to see how one could simplify Linux networking. It requires one ip addr command to set an IP address and one ip route command to set a default route. And on IPv6 even those are unnecessary, it's automatic.

      And

      • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @01:48AM (#48658049)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by Anonymous Coward

          Sounds like the new feature list for Windows XP.

        • by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @02:14AM (#48658149) Homepage Journal

          oh, does bridging work finally? I spent well over an hour with nmcli docs and on Google trying to setup bridges for each vlan I was using on an el7 machine and got nowhere close to working. Spent 5 min setting up redhat ifcfg- files and was done after yum uninstalling nm. It says that nmcli got some love in 1.0, and boy that's a good thing.

        • No, they spent 10 years simplifying things like scanning for wireless access points, detecting the encryption type, and storing credentials. Or setting up routing over Bluetooth. Or configuring and switching between different types of VPNs. Or bridging between multiple interfaces. And having a little icon in your system tray that you can right-click on to do it all.

          It took 10 years to do THAT? It acts like they have spent maybe 3 months throwing together some cheap Python scripts that they do not understand. It is a buggy, terrible, network access denying, piece of crap abortion from the pits of hell.

      • by hobarrera ( 2008506 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @03:25AM (#48658357) Homepage

        > It's hard to see how one could simplify Linux networking. It requires one ip addr command to set an IP address and one ip route command to set a default route. And on IPv6 even those are unnecessary, it's automatic.

        And a dns, too. And the wireless network name. And the wireless network username+password.

        And then, I have to do it all again in two minutes when you walk out of range. And then again when you get home. And then again at a cafe.

        NM might not be the nicest of things, but it sure beats the hell out of running several commands every time I relocate myself/my laptop.

        • It presents the same problem as systemd. Take one problem, solving wifi connections, and then make a tool which unnecessarily manages all aspects of networking. dhclient manages to remain long-running and handle the DHCP operations for an interface, all that was needed was the equivalent wifi daemon. Once you step beyond the simplest configurations, Network-Manager has always become an impediment and not an assistant.

        • And the wireless network name. And the wireless network username+password.

          And then, I have to do it all again in two minutes when you walk out of range. And then again when you get home. And then again at a cafe.

          NM might not be the nicest of things, but it sure beats the hell out of running several commands every time I relocate myself/my laptop.

          You really haven't had to do it that way since 2004.

          $ man wpa_supplicant.conf

        • A couple of scripts could get you the same functionality in a MUCH more reliable manner that does not negatively affect millions of Linux users.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Indeed. Surreal it is. I do admit that I usually stick to the old commands (now wrappers) like ifconfig and route, unless I need policy-based routing.

    • Ive been using Linux since SLS days, even before there was a network stack.

      never heard of it either.

      obviously it's some tool the kids have put together to solve a problem that BSD's ifconfig solved in the 1980s.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Yeah, sounds like it. Or maybe some nice, restricted GUI for people that do not understand networking.

  • by DerPflanz ( 525793 ) <bart@NOSPAm.friesoft.nl> on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @04:52AM (#48658585) Homepage

    Since NetworkManager, day-to-day network use (be it WiFi, wired or whatever) Just Works. I like that.

    However, when (as a developer, hardware-tinkerer or network problem solver) you are plugging in and out cables, connecting devices, etc, it would be nice to have NetworkManager to be put on "mute" or something. Just keep my fixed IP on the correct devices and stop enabling and disabling connections. That's the only time I turn the service off.

    • One step away from predesigned usage pattern and you are in conflict with NM. This is terribly wrong when system level tool force you to fight to solve some rather mundane tasks. It is wrong when it is easier to edit manually supplicant config files to configure WiFi properly, then extend NM a little.
      • Well, you don't have to figth it. It will autoconfigure just fine after moving the cables. All you need to do is wait the 500ms it takes to do a new DHCP request and get the same IP adress again. If that is too long, you should probably be using a static configuration in the first place.

      • One step away from predesigned usage pattern and you are in conflict

        This is so typical in Linux world. :(

        Stuff has fragile integration and when you step away from the beaten path, weird glitches appear.

  • ..it will be replaced by systemd sooner or later. It's actually one of the long term systemd goals.
  • 10 years for version 1.0? Really?

  • to be replaced by systemd.
    nm includes dhcp client, systemd also. both are RH projects, wtf.

  • This is a piece of software which is very user-oriented instead of service oriented. The short implication of that is, if a computer is dedicated to a single user, it's a rather useful toolkit (most of the time). (it causes havoc if one's trying to do something outside of "normal desktop behaviour")

    This software is actively hostile in a service-oriented environment - aggressively so. It's possible if one controls all of the network resource allocation systems (dhcp et al), that one can minimize the

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