Hi, > Then, in the network connections menu, an item "externally managed > connection"...
as stated in a similar post on lwn, I would like to strongly second the below. There are some folks out there who are working on proprietary/corporate connection managers (incuding myself) and currently NM just locks them out and causes them a lot of trouble. A few small features could easily rectify the situation and I do not think that externally managed connections would cause too much trouble for NM: - dbus method(s) that allows to make NM aware of a custom connection and its status - A dbus method that allows external applications to tell NM to leave a particular device/interface alone I think that nobody is asking to change major NM workings, just the very minimum to allow custom connections to co-exist, and avoid these troublesome Firefox, Evolution, resolv.conf etc. etc. issues. thanks for your patience, Chris http://www.acurana.de/ On Monday 07 September 2009 12:53:58 Pietro Battiston wrote: > By looking at bugs filed and words spent in several different bug > trackers and mailing lists, I fear NM developers may be quite allergic > to the words forming the subject of this email, but though indeed the > problem gathered a big attention, I didn't find any (reasonably recent) > documented answer to the three questions I'm asking, so here ends the > prologue: > > > 1) the most clear answer I found to the claim: > > "NM doesn't support generic ppp, so I must connect with > $APP_TO_HANDLE_PPP_CONNECTION and NM doesn't notice it, so > $APP_USING_NETWORK doesn't connect, thinking I'm disconnected" > > is at [0] and basically says: > > "nobody is working on it, if somebody would like to, please step in". > > This was obviously an admissible position; is it still true, or did the > creation of MobileManager change future hopes of generic (or at least > bluetooth) ppp support in NM? I ask it because the name of the project > seems to suggest it, though in presenting it at [1], Dan only talks > about "All mobile broadbands", and the same does the README. > > > 2) supposing that answer to 1) is "no, people connecting via a > traditional modem or a mobile via bluetooth shouldn't just hope NM > supporting them soon", then wouldn't it make sense to allow _setting_, > instead than just _querying_, online/offline status via DBUS? > > This would allow, with few lines of code, tools like Gnome-PPP to say > "hey, NM, we _are_ online"[2] > > Then, in the network connections menu, an item "externally managed > connection" could also possibly show up and activate... > > I perfectly understand this is not something NM developers dream of, > being not part of the standard infrastructure, but it would be of huge > help to those who - like me and many people I know of (BTW, from > personal experience I frankly doubt about the 98% Alexander's estimate > in [0]) - need to connect via bluetooth/standard modems (it may be OT, > but let me mention that this is one of the few things Windows/OS X > softwares do nicely since many years and Linux Desktop doesn't). > > I (don't know NM internals and) suppose some things may not work as > usually: for instance, I can imagine sharing a connection would be a > problem, if NM doesn't control it... but _this_ is really a minor > problem. > > > 3) Why was PPP generic support dropped? Because it was broken/lacking > manpower or just because mobile broadband support covered many of the > use cases of it? > > > thanks for your patience in answering(/providing me pointers if the > questions are indeed answered elsewhere). > > Pietro Battiston > > [0] > http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/220497/ > [1] > http://blogs.gnome.org/dcbw/2009/03/20/thats-when-i-reach-for-my-revolver/ > [2] > They could also say "hey, NM, we are online thanks to the process with > pid $pid, assume we are online as long as it is alive!", or "we are > online thanks to card ppp*, assume we are online until it exists!"... > but this is not _so_ necessary, since it would be easy, for the calling > app, to spawn a separate monitoring process which finally would say > "hey, NM, control back to you" at the end of the connection. _______________________________________________ NetworkManager-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list
