Public bug reported:
Hi,
first of all, let me inform you that I'm a very long term linux user. I
installed my first linux in 1993. That means I worked through myriads of
different network configuration issues, where networks are describes in
terms of 1 to 20 different configuration files.
Network configuration is always very custom to every environment and
every user. Though in the older days the legacy ifconfig, route and
friends had a strange syntax of options. I assume that's the reason why
system designers chose to abstract away these syntax from the user.
IMHO these abstraction layers never really worked and the most annoying
thing about these different network configuration files is, that syntax
and location changes between distributions and sometimes between minor
releases.
The funny thing is, that most if not any network configuration
management tool is build of little programs, that finally sends command
lines in the form of ifconfig, route etc. or in our days iproute2.
The iproute2 syntax is the best syntax you can get from the cli. It is
expressive, simple, well documented and quite - if not completly - bug
free. Often when you write twenty LOC (lines of code) configuration
options into a network abstraction syntax configuration file, this
compiles into less than 10 LOC of iproute2 commands.
In the end the plain iproute2 command line syntax is more clear and
simple than any network abstraction idea from any distribution and if
you did that once on any distribution, you simply copy your setup into
another distribution and it will most likely work out of the box.
Today I tried a beta update from Ubuntu 16.04 -> Ubuntu 16.10. After I
restarted the computer my network was gone, all network cards where in
the "unmanaged" status in the NetworkManager applet and the
configuration that previously worked was gone, so I couldn't even review
what had worked in the previous version.
Searching the internet for such problems, I found some [ifupdown]
setting to be switched to managed=true. After I did that and restarted
the several services (networking and network-manager), nothing happened.
Searching systemctl list-units for the network manager reveals that it
is not there anymore, but the "network-manager" initialization script
can be found in /etc/init.d/network-manager.
Actually there is some systemctl magic that actually started the
NetworkManager without a network-manager service, unit or whatever.
To get my network up again I had to edit /etc/network/interfaces and put
my network card to
auto NETDEVICE
iface NETDEVICE inet dhcp
. As I told before, the iproute2 commands to get this thing going is
ip link set dev NETDEVICE up # much more descriptive and easier to
distinguish than auto NETDEV
Of course iproute2 does not contain dhcp. So to get an auto
configuration from my network card I also need to talk to the dhcp
client:
dhclient NETDEVICE
You see here that two manual and simple to memorize calls completely
replace the two lines in the /etc/network/interface syntax and it is
much more transparent what happens to the system, when you work with the
commands directly. For more complex setups I sometimes do, the iproute2
and bridge commands are much more flexible and very seldom there are
more lines of code to setup a network than in any network configuration
syntax.
Now it seems that the /etc/NetworkManager configuration is completely
ignored and there is a systemd-networkd not running, that can be
controlled by a networkctl.
So I'm completely confused now, what method you ubuntu distributors
think of, to be the next cool technique to replace a simple sequence of
commands.
What about throwing away all these NetworkManager, networkctl and
networking stuff and simply rely on the basics. Many years of failed
network configurations show that all these methods don't actually work
and that it is very easy for a user to understand the used underlying
techniques:
iproute2, dhcp and wpa_supplicant
For simple setups the commands and configurations needed are learned in
a few minutes. For complex setups it is easier to understand the core
technology than to research the distributors idea of network
configuration.
Please clost this bag of worms.
** Affects: network-manager-applet (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1658451
Title:
NetworkManager stops working on upgrade 16.04 -> 16.10
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