CentOS - May 2017 - From Networkmanager to self managed configuration files

On 8 March 2017 at 11:15, Alice Wonder <alice at domblogger.net>
wrote:
> On 03/08/2017 01:57 AM, Giles Coochey wrote:
>>
>>
>>> The recommended configuration for EL7 is to use NetworkManager
unless
>>> you have a very specific edge case preventing you from doing so:
>>>
>> The truth is a lot of us run servers that don't need to have their
>> network "managed" by Networkmanager.
>>
>
> My experience was very difficult going to 7.2 to 7.3 because of a change in
> the behavior of NetworkManager with respect to IPv6 but once I had it
> figured out (thanks to people on this list) it worked out quite well and I
> kept NetworkManager.
>
> But I certainly understand why some don't want to do that.

That's fine Alice (and I remember your issue well with the minimally
documented change to stable-privacy by default for new systems ...
argh I still need to write up a blog article about that) but in this
case the person concerned isn't even using the network service, which
if legacy and semi-deprecated is still supported, but just doing a
ridiculous and unsupportable mini script (I'm guessing from rc.local?)
which doesn't handle pretty much any actual networking issue that may
come up - eg failed/delayed interface.

On 8 March 2017 at 11:19, James Hogarth <james.hogarth at gmail.com>
wrote:
> On 8 March 2017 at 11:15, Alice Wonder <alice at domblogger.net>
wrote:
>> On 03/08/2017 01:57 AM, Giles Coochey wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> The recommended configuration for EL7 is to use NetworkManager
unless
>>>> you have a very specific edge case preventing you from doing
so:
>>>>
>>> The truth is a lot of us run servers that don't need to have
their
>>> network "managed" by Networkmanager.
>>>
>>
>> My experience was very difficult going to 7.2 to 7.3 because of a
change in
>> the behavior of NetworkManager with respect to IPv6 but once I had it
>> figured out (thanks to people on this list) it worked out quite well
and I
>> kept NetworkManager.
>>
>> But I certainly understand why some don't want to do that.
>
>
> That's fine Alice (and I remember your issue well with the minimally
> documented change to stable-privacy by default for new systems ...
> argh I still need to write up a blog article about that) but in this
> case the person concerned isn't even using the network service, which
> if legacy and semi-deprecated is still supported, but just doing a
> ridiculous and unsupportable mini script (I'm guessing from rc.local?)
> which doesn't handle pretty much any actual networking issue that may
> come up - eg failed/delayed interface.
Apologies for the slight necro but I felt this thread was the closest
linked to the topic, and since it was of interest to Alice at the time
may be of interest to others too.

I've just finished up and published my NetworkManager rebased article
covering the changes (focusing on behavioural ones):

https://www.hogarthuk.com/?q=node/18

I do like the idea of my wifi mac being able to be set to random by
default now ... I may well enable that as a default (to handle
trivially the use case of unknown public wifi) and toggle it to
preserve or stable for my known standard connections.

The master-slave style connections (whether vlan, bond, team or
bridge) are much easier to deal with now as well at the command line,
something I'm very happy to see.

On 4 May 2017 at 12:44, James Hogarth <james.hogarth at gmail.com>
wrote:
> On 8 March 2017 at 11:19, James Hogarth <james.hogarth at gmail.com>
wrote:
>> On 8 March 2017 at 11:15, Alice Wonder <alice at domblogger.net>
wrote:
>>> On 03/08/2017 01:57 AM, Giles Coochey wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> The recommended configuration for EL7 is to use
NetworkManager unless
>>>>> you have a very specific edge case preventing you from
doing so:
>>>>>
>>>> The truth is a lot of us run servers that don't need to
have their
>>>> network "managed" by Networkmanager.
>>>>
>>>
>>> My experience was very difficult going to 7.2 to 7.3 because of a
change in
>>> the behavior of NetworkManager with respect to IPv6 but once I had
it
>>> figured out (thanks to people on this list) it worked out quite
well and I
>>> kept NetworkManager.
>>>
>>> But I certainly understand why some don't want to do that.
>>
>>
>> That's fine Alice (and I remember your issue well with the
minimally
>> documented change to stable-privacy by default for new systems ...
>> argh I still need to write up a blog article about that) but in this
>> case the person concerned isn't even using the network service,
which
>> if legacy and semi-deprecated is still supported, but just doing a
>> ridiculous and unsupportable mini script (I'm guessing from
rc.local?)
>> which doesn't handle pretty much any actual networking issue that
may
>> come up - eg failed/delayed interface.
>
> Apologies for the slight necro but I felt this thread was the closest
> linked to the topic, and since it was of interest to Alice at the time
> may be of interest to others too.
>
> I've just finished up and published my NetworkManager rebased article
> covering the changes (focusing on behavioural ones):
>
> https://www.hogarthuk.com/?q=node/18
>
> I do like the idea of my wifi mac being able to be set to random by
> default now ... I may well enable that as a default (to handle
> trivially the use case of unknown public wifi) and toggle it to
> preserve or stable for my known standard connections.
>
> The master-slave style connections (whether vlan, bond, team or
> bridge) are much easier to deal with now as well at the command line,
> something I'm very happy to see.
And for those interested in the NM changes Fedora Magazine just published this:

https://fedoramagazine.org/networkmanager-changes-improvements/

I'm of reasonable confidence we'll see another bump in the NM version
at 7.4 when it eventually hits beta so it's worth looking out for the
NM 1.6.0 and 1.8.0 changes.

`nmcli -g <connection-property> con sh <conn-name>` will be lovely
for
scripting for instance and MACsec may see some love on corporate
networks.

There doesn't look to be any behaviour level changes that will be
breaking like Alice faced before though ... some outputs to differ if
you are parsing specifically so check that.

One example that jumped out to me today was connection.zone (if using
NetworkManager to define the firewalld zone of a connection which is
not common yet) changes from "--" to "" when it's not
defined.