On Mon, 11 Dec 2006, Marc Schwartz wrote:
On Mon, 2006-12-11 at 12:12 -0500, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
On Mon, 11 Dec 2006, Marc Schwartz wrote:
Aaron Konstam wrote:
On Mon, 2006-12-11 at 09:42 -0500, Gene Poole wrote:
Beware - It seems that the first time you use NetworkManager it destroys
the contents of you resolv.conf (built at install time). It also seems
that it doesn't make a backup copy first.
Thanks,
Gene Poole
I have never noticed that this is true. I will have to look into your
statement.
If you have a network profile that is based upon a fixed IP address and DNS
servers (which I do have at home behind a router with DHCP disabled), then NM
will overwrite the configurations for that profile, including
/etc/resolv.conf.
I use NM at work, where we have DHCP and of course with wireless networks
when travelling.
However, at home, I end up disabling NM and then run a shell script which
activates the Home profile and associated config settings and then ifup's
eth0.
It seems to me that I have seen references to this previously, relative to
using NM when one has a fixed IP and DNS settings. My recollection is that NM
is really configured for DHCP based nets and does not (yet) support network
profiles.
However, I would love for somebody to tell me that I am wrong on this, as I
would love to not have to go through the steps that I do when at home.
Do you access the Internet directly at home or through some sort of
router? If the latter, you can probably configure your home router to
provide DHCP service (including nameserver info) to your laptop.
Matthew,
As I note above, yes, I do use a router... :-)
Oh, yeah. I see now.
I have DHCP disabled as part of a multi-layer approach to security.
Specific IPs are enabled for use by my family, all others are disabled.
I suppose that I could still do this, as you note below, while enabling
DHCP and DNS info and thus still use NM. I just had not taken that
approach and NM has not been an issue until the last couple of FC
releases anyway. I have been using RH/FC since the late RH 8.0 betas.
I don't think you have much to fear from DHCP on the wired side. on the
wireless side, I use MAC address restrictions on the WAP and DHCP and
encryption for security.
I do this, and NM works just fine. I actually use a Linux box as a home
server. It runs dhcpd so it can even match IP addresses to MAC addresses
so machines get "static" addresses.
IIRC, NM should respect a static id set in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts,
but you still need to stop it and change profiles if you sometimes have a
static id and sometimes want to DHCP.
Yeah, I do have the occasion where I need to go back and forth between
fixed IP and DHCP, hence I wrote the scripts that I have to address
this. As I note, a more unified approach via NM would be helpful.
Having had the chance now to set up network connections with Windows,
Linux and more recently, Mac OS X, the latter seems to have a relatively
easy to use interface relative to selecting a "location" and enabling it
along with the attendant profile. My daughter's new Intel Core 2 Duo
based MacBook, has this and it has made it very easy for her to go
between home, university and other locations with a simple menu based
selection, using location profiles that I configured for her. It is a
lot easier than, for example, using the the gnome-netstatus-applet after
disabling NM.
In either case, it is a livable situation until such time as NM can
support profiles. Users in this situation just need to be aware of the
gotchas.
IIRC, that's slated for a future release.
Thanks,
Marc
--
Matthew Saltzman
Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs
