On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 7:54 PM, Tom H <tomh0...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, May 30, 2011 at 12:19 PM, Nico Kadel-Garcia <nka...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> NetworkManager has been one of the biggest disasters in GUI and >> configuration history known to open source. It has absolutely *no* use >> in normal desktop or server operation: it cannot configure basic >> configurations such as pair-bonding or bridges effectively, and its >> ability to wipe out and override normal configuratons without warning >> is the bane of stability. >> >> It has some vague uses for traveling laptops, that may need >> comfortable tools to manipulate VPN's and wireless connections, but >> it's that good even at those. > > I hate to disappoint you but I can see the day where we'll have NM > running on headless, X-less boxes. Fedora 13/14/15 install it when you > do a kickstart install with just "@base" in "packages" section. > Scientific Linux 6 (and I therefore assume RHEL 6) doesn't have it by > default but I wouldn't be surprised to see it there in v7. There's a > site where I admin some Fedora boxes. I used to have "/usr/bin/yum -y > erase NetworkManager" in my "%post" section but I've now given up the > anti-NM fight; I've just set up a dev F15 box with NM. > > I've just installed NM in two Debian and Ubuntu server VMs and it runs > fine so it could be added to all tasksel tasks. I'm sure that there'd > be a big discussion on the respective devel lists if anyone proposed > to install NM in the basic server installs (this discussion would > probably make the insserv discussion mild and civilized by > comparison).
Try to set up pair-bonding, or bridged network devices for KVM use correctly with NetworkManager. Unless something has really changed, they're not supported, and these are very basic network configurations for production servers. The software violates the most basic of principles of open source GUI design. This includes *every single one* of my published add-ons to Eric Raymond's guidelines on open source GUI's at http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html. (Eric gracefully included my notes as an addendum to his article: I think i'm the only one who sent additional guidelines for that article, rather than merely agreeing with its well justified rant about open source GUI's.) The worst points are the NetworkManager cannot *read* basic network configuration values such as pair-bonding, it will *overwrite* them, and it *will not tell you it did so*. It will muck up your /etc/hosts and your /etc/resolv.conf *without warning*. And it's completely unnecessary for any but a few hosts that wander from wireless to wired to VPN to publicn internet and need a vaguely comprehensible GUI. It therefore absolutely should not be a part of any basic OS installation, and should only be used for laptops or other wandering hardware for which its limited flexibility is, in fact, useful. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/banlktimq6vkezt2sqgiupqbeeqdrazv...@mail.gmail.com
