Re: Bits from the Release Team - Kicking off Wheezy

[Martin Wuertele <maxx@debian.org>]

* Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> [2011-04-03 20:56]:

> The kernel necessarily holds the working network configuration, though
> it lacks e.g. credentials for WPA or 802.1x which are handled by
> user-space.  User-space can change that state, and can read the state
> (including waiting for updates) using netlink.  User-space needs to
> provide policy for potential states, and authentication credentials.
> 
> I think that what people like about ifupdown (when it works) is that
> they can say 'put this interface in this state' and then go on to tweak
> that state.  ifupdown often fails at this because it relies on state
> files that can become stale, and it doesn't understand dependencies.  NM
> fails because it doesn't support many of the configurations that people
> want, and because it will try to re-enter the configured state again
> after e.g. a link reset.

Does this imply that "fixing" ifupdown to query the state(s) via netlink
instead of relying on state files would solve most of the problems?

yours,
Martin