Networkmanager doesn't connect to network in runlevel 3

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I’ve noticed this since the early Milestone releases. If I boot into runlevel 3 and press esc to see the output of the boot process, it stops at “starting the networkmanager” and begins a 30 second countdown. The result is it stops at 1 sec and then outputs “waiting” in yellow.

The boot process finishes and I can log in but I’m not connected to my network. It says that networkmanager is running but I have no ip address. Once I start X and KDE, my network connects normally.

Is anyone else getting this?

Is there a way I can get an ip address while in runlevel 3?

2

If I were to say, switch to ifup instead, is that really annoying, because I guess you already know that.

3

This doesn’t happen when booting into runlevel 3 with 11.2. The output shows networkmanager starting and immediately it shows a green ‘done’. There is no thirty second countdown like with 11.3.

I was wondering if anyone else is getting this or if it’s just my system.

Does anyone know if networkmanager requires the gui to be running to obtain an ip address?

4

Your question led me think that you may need to read: NetworkManager - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Network manager is in fact a (local) server, that acts on requests of a (local) client. This client is normaly the network applet in a desktop and thus of course belongs to a GUI session.

I do not know if there are CLI network manager clients, but then again you have to log in in the CLI first.

Normaly systems that run only in runlevel 3 do not need a network manager because they are more server like systems and thus have a fixed network setup (in openSUSE YaST called: traditional with ifup"). Then the network is fully available when runlevel 3 (or higher) is reached.

5

Thanks hcvv. I see that in 11.2, despite that there’s no thirty second countdown for networkmanager, there is no ip address either. Switching to ifup does give me an ip address in runlevel 3.

I’m still curious. Is anyone else seeing the thirty second countdown for networkmanager in 11.3? This lengthens the boot time by, well, 30 seconds. :wink:

6

Not really, but I’m using a special 0.8.1 stabilized version by Dan Williams, which is mainly covered here:

NetworkManager in Fedora 13 - FedoraProject

Reason why I’m doing this is because according to Dan Williams there are some features present on this version (shipped with Fedora 13) that are not included anywhere else.

7

Ah yes, the DW networkmangler. I’d like to know who decided that his 3rd party code was better than what had gone before from ‘inhouse’. (where are schaa and hoenig when we need 'em?) He obviously thinks that nobody uses cables or he’d have put an ‘enable’ against it. His little heart icon is nice though

just coz I’m in that mood :slight_smile:

8

found the solution to this problem
edit /etc/sysconfig/network/config and change NM_ONLINE_TIMOUT parameter

Type: int

Default: 30

When using NetworkManager you may define a timeout to wait for NetworkManager

to connect in /etc/init.d/network(-remotefs) script. Other network services

may require the system to have a valid network setup in order to succeed.

This variable has no effect if NETWORKMANAGER=no.

NM_ONLINE_TIMEOUT=“5”

9

Thanks for the response, koen_dewitte. My config file looks a little different:

## Type:    integer
## Default:    30
#
# Some interfaces need some time to come up or come asynchronously via hotplug.
# WAIT_FOR_INTERFACES is a global wait for all mandatory interfaces in
# seconds. If empty no wait occurs.
#
WAIT_FOR_INTERFACES="30"

I’ll try editing this to 5 and see what happens.

10

you can use ‘cnetworkmanager’ as a client to the Networkmanager server (like hcvv explained nicely). Install ‘cnetworkmanager’ and do a ‘man cnetworkmanager’ to find out how to use it.