I visited openFATE yesterday, and saw your proposal. There’s only one vote - probably yours if you are allowed to vote on your own proposal. I’m leaning toward voting for it.
I normally use “ifup” on desktops. But I recently installed “openSUSE Education Li-f-e 13.1” on a desktop (mostly to review it for my blog), and it used NetworkManager. That’s working fine, and I have no reason to change it to “ifup”, though that would be easy enough to do.
I’ve also experimented with installing opensuse on an external drive. And, if using an external drive, it is better to go with NetworkManager. A benefit of the external drive is supposed to be that you can plug it into a different computer and still boot it. When using “ifup”, the networking is tied to device names. With “NetworkManager” it isn’t, so that better fits the use of an external drive.
For a server, I want “ifup”, because networking should not be tied to the GUI desktop environment. But for non-server use, even on a desktop, “NetworkManager” does just fine. For those not aware, if an ethernet connection is available, then “NetworkManager” will connect with that and it does not require any user configuration or user login for the connection to be started. It does depend on having a DHCP server on the network, but these days most people use home routers which provide DHCP.
So, yes, for a beginning user, “NetworkManager” is fine. An experienced user can easily switch to “ifup” when that is appropriate.
On Mon, 20 Jan 2014 06:41:07 GMT, Will Honea <whonea@whonea.net> wrote:
>josephkk wrote:
>
>> To say the least. At home i have a statically addressed wired net anda
>> dynamically addressed wifi net. I go many places where i need to access
>> dynamically addressed networks, both wired and wireless. Being able to
>> dynamically suit the situation in user mode would be most welcome. Does
>> any distro do this yet?
>>
>
>Been doing that for several releases using Network manager - some NM
>connections assign fixed addresses, others use dhcp. The 13.1 versions of
>NM finally seem to get it right most of the time on anything 11.4 or above.
>
>I still have to enter the pass phrase for dhcp assigned newly discovered
>wifi connections otherwise it’s just a matter of selecting the desired ap
>from the discovery list.
Are you telling me that NM really can handle some statically addressed
network situations? From what i have read that in doubtful. I also
really need to mix static addressed versus dynamic addressed on a per
device basis, i have not seen anything that claims to do that.
>
>> To say the least. At home i have a statically addressed wired net anda
>> dynamically addressed wifi net. I go many places where i need to access
>> dynamically addressed networks, both wired and wireless. Being able to
>> dynamically suit the situation in user mode would be most welcome. Does
>> any distro do this yet?
>I use NM to do that now in a my profession as a wireless/network
>engineer. (I have multiple wired and wireless profiles defined in NM.)
OK tell us more on how to configure it, particularly static on one
interface and dynamic on another.
>
>> To say the least. At home i have a statically addressed wired net
>> and a dynamically addressed wifi net. I go many places where i need
>> to access dynamically addressed networks, both wired and wireless.
>> Being able to dynamically suit the situation in user mode would be
>> most welcome. Does any distro do this yet?
>I use NM to do that now in a my profession as a wireless/network
>engineer. (I have multiple wired and wireless profiles defined in NM.)
OK tell us more on how to configure it, particularly static on one
interface and dynamic on another.
?-)
Hi
On GNOME NM I just edit the wifi-settings as required selecting manual
settings, I use static ip’s, dns (over-ride the router ones) and the
gateway route, save and use.
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 13.1 (Bottle) (x86_64) GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.11.10-7-desktop
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OK tell us more on how to configure it, particularly static on one
interface and dynamic on another.
As Malcolm explained, it’s just matter of configuring wired and wireless with the desired static or dynamic settings. Not complicated at all. I have a number of predefined connections for the various environments I’m expected to connect to. I quite often have a wireless internet connection while using the ethernet interface (with statically assigned address) to configure a network device. Here’s an example of a connection defined with static address
> Are you telling me that NM really can handle some statically addressed
> network situations? From what i have read that in doubtful. I also
> really need to mix static addressed versus dynamic addressed on a per
> device basis, i have not seen anything that claims to do that.
Of course it does. I use it, the gnome variant (actuall, the xfce variant).
If is is wifi, on the 1pv4 tab I choose “manual” and enter the address.
You also define the gateway and dns server. You can have one definition
per each wifi connection you setup, because the SSID differentiates
them; the right one activates automatically as you move from site to site.
For cable connection, however, although you can have several configs,
you have to manually choose one, AFAIK. I don’t see how they would be
identified automatically.
If you have access to the router, though, it is easier to use DHCP and
configure the router to give you always the same IP, associated to your
MAC address.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)
Back when choosing a modern distro (yes, sometimes I can remember that far back rotfl!), the completeness of configuration controls in Yast, along with what is available in the KDE interface for “Configure Desktop”, is probably the number 1 reason I chose openSUSE when testing several different distros on live CDs.
I think it is also a main selling point when I convert Windows users, or put brand new users, to openSUSE Linux.
>
>> OK tell us more on how to configure it, particularly static on one
>> interface and dynamic on another.
>As Malcolm explained, it’s just matter of configuring wired and
>wireless with the desired static or dynamic settings. Not complicated at
>all. I have a number of predefined connections for the various
>environments I’m expected to connect to. I quite often have a wireless
>internet connection while using the ethernet interface (with statically
>assigned address) to configure a network device. Here’s an example of a
>connection defined with static address
>
>
>Code:
>--------------------
> [802-3-ethernet]
> port=mii
>
> [connection]
> id=Ubiquiti
> uuid=8737a351-bc51-4a4c-8851-02c8a95fdbad
> type=802-3-ethernet
> autoconnect=false
> zone=
>
> [ipv6]
> method=ignore
> ip6-privacy=0
>
> [ipv4]
> method=manual
> address1=192.168.1.19/24,0.0.0.0
> may-fail=false
>
>--------------------
OK. But i haven’t used NM before, so i don’t know what file to put that
into. I like to plug in to my Gb net to see my servers, but outside
fixing up all those wireless nets all the time eats a bit of time. I’ll
still add my fave outside DNS servers to the wifi local ones and watch the
gateways.
>On 2014-03-20 12:43, josephkk wrote:
>
>> Are you telling me that NM really can handle some statically addressed
>> network situations? From what i have read that in doubtful. I also
>> really need to mix static addressed versus dynamic addressed on a per
>> device basis, i have not seen anything that claims to do that.
>
>Of course it does. I use it, the gnome variant (actuall, the xfce variant).
>
>If is is wifi, on the 1pv4 tab I choose “manual” and enter the address.
>You also define the gateway and dns server. You can have one definition
>per each wifi connection you setup, because the SSID differentiates
>them; the right one activates automatically as you move from site to site.
>
>For cable connection, however, although you can have several configs,
>you have to manually choose one, AFAIK. I don’t see how they would be
>identified automatically.
>
>
>If you have access to the router, though, it is easier to use DHCP and
>configure the router to give you always the same IP, associated to your
>MAC address.
Unfortunately many cheap routers don’t do consistent ipv4 addresses
correctly. More frustrating is many will fight over who is gateway.
You don’t have to configure by hand. You use the simple GUI configuration tool that’s part of the NM front-end (whether KDE, Gnome,… version). The defined connections are located in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/
