[wellylug] Network manager 0.7 in Intrepid as buggy as ever

[Rob van der Linde]

About 4-5 months ago, I tried NM 0.7 in Hardy through a PPA. The main
bug I came across is that NM 0.7 does not allow static IP's *AT ALL*.

NM 0.7 is included in Ubuntu Intrepid, which is coming out on the 30th.
I decided to install the BETA yesterday, I often do a few weeks before
release.

Sadly, the state of NM has not changed. There are about 3 or so major
bugs, that stop you from using a static IP, unless you get rid of NM all
together. I am not sure if these bugs exist in Fedora 9, because the
author of NM is a Fedora user himself, I have read that NM gets more
attention for Fedora.

The first one is actually listed as a known bug for the BETA of Intrepid
on the download page, is that NM 0.7 does not yet know how to "unhandle"
network devices in the "/etc/network/interfaces" file, and no matter
what you put in there, NM will always connect using DHCP, or you don't
get a connection at all, as what I get when I manually edited this file.

The second, NM 0.7 has an "Auth eth0" connection, which has two
tickboxes. "Auto connect", and "System device". It is also set to DHCP
by default.

No matter what you try, you cannot get a static IP and get it to hold
after a reboot, if you try to change "Auto eth0" to static, NM will
change it back to DHCP after a reboot.

If you create a new profile say "Manual eth0", set that to static, tick
for that connection "auto connect", and untick it on the "Auto etho"
profile. This is also pointless, and on a reboot, NM will put the tick
box for auto connect straight back in for "Auto eth0" and connect to
this device instead.

My last hope, was to every time manually switch to the "Manual eth0"
connection after a reboot by clicking this option in NM each time. Even
this is not possible, as what happens, is because they are the same
ethernet devices, because of another bug in NM, it only "appears" to
change to static IP, but you notice that change is too quick to be
realistic. And opening a terminal and typing ifconfig confirms this,
that it has not actually really switched the ethernet device to static
IP, but it's still on dynamic. I think NM will only really switch
properly if both profiles use different network devices.

So in the end, what did I have to do? Disable NM completely
from /etc/rc0.d, etc.. and manually edit the /etc/network/interfaces
file, because in Intrepid, the old Gnome network configuration dialog is
gone, replaced with the horrible buggy NM 0.7.

Intrepid will be out in under two weeks, and I fear NM won't be able to
be fixed in time, so this is something we have to live with yet again
(there's always something wrong with Ubuntu, every release). I can
imagine heaps of people struggling with this bug, imagine Telstraclear
customers that have to be on a static IP. If you want static IP, get rid
of NM all together, and edit the /etc/network/interfaces file the old
fashioned way, at least it works.

I imagine NM 0.7 will be great for laptops, but for machines that need a
static IP, it's currently useless due to these bugs.

NM 0.7 in it's current state should have never been bundled with
Intrepid if you ask me, they should have kept 0.6, because it "just
works".

Anyone running Fedora, able to use a static IP at all using NM 0.7, and
it remembering the setting on a reboot?
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