Re: [CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-16 Thread Nicolas Kovacs

Le 13/02/2020 à 17:50, Stephen John Smoogen a écrit :

In the end, the problem is that NetworkManager, FirewallD, and other
'automatic' helpers are 'part' of the OS.. and while it was easy to tear
them out in earlier versions.. as time goes on it is not.

For a car analogy, it was much easier to convert any 1970 car from
automatic back to manual as many parts were left over. Now in this era, you
can do so if you pick the right car but for a lot of them it is not going
to be easy in any form. I see the same trends in computer OS's with certain
tools which were easy to pull out now requiring you to build the whole os
from scratch as the part is assumed to be in so many other areas.


I'm currently in the process of making peace with NetworkManager, FirewallD, 
etc. and adopting them on my servers.


Here's a start :

  * https://www.microlinux.fr/networkmanager-centos-rhel-1/

Cheers,

Niki

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Re: [CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-15 Thread Natxo Asenjo
hi,


On Mon, Feb 10, 2020 at 8:55 AM Nicolas Kovacs  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> 
> On servers though, one of the first post-installation steps I performed
> was to
> get rid of Network-Manager and all its components. The servers I'm working
> on
> are relatively small-scale and have from one to four network interfaces.
> Each
> interface has a corresponding configuration in
> /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts,
> and that's it. From there, I rarely - if ever - touch it. In all my
> setups,
> NetworkManager is merely a useless layer of abstraction, and I like
> sticking to
> the KISS principle and shave off useless layers.
>

Interesting philosophical discussion but using centos means you need to go
with whatever red hat decides, so if they say so, then you have few options.

I must admit I have long refused to use networkmanager, but since centos 7
it has been rock solid. And as we use config tools (salt right now, but it
is the same with the rest of the competition) I do not really care what
they use to abstract the network configuration as long as it works. And
work it does, so everybody is happy.

Another huge selling point is that it is what cockpit uses to configure the
network interfaces, and cockpit is really nice for less advanced users. So
our more junior people can get their feet wet using cockpit, and we can
automate everything using configuration management, and both tools use the
same api so nobody gets left behind.

Tab completion makes it easy to use, too ;-)

In the end, my take is: whoever comes after me needs to understand whatever
we were doing, so let's just sitck with what the vendor provides (regarding
the operating system) and use best of breed tooling to manage it (which may
or may not be what the OS vendor recommends, but can fit better the
business's requirements).

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natxo
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Re: [CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-13 Thread Valeri Galtsev



On 2020-02-13 10:50, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:

On Thu, 13 Feb 2020 at 11:40, Nicolas Kovacs  wrote:


Le 11/02/2020 à 14:11, Jonathan Billings a écrit :

I've mentioned on this list countless times about how NetworkManager
is actually pretty good for a general server.  Automatic link
detection and activation/deactivation, a dispatch service on link
activation/deactivation, support for bringing up secondary interfaces
after a primary goes up, a dbus interface for automation, etc.


I just prepared myself to catch up and learn more about NetworkManager. So
I
opened my big fat "Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook 5th
edition",
with a text file open on the computer to take extensive notes...

... only to find out that there is only half a page on NetworkManager in
this
book. Allow me to quote it:

"NetworkManager is primarily of use on laptops, since their network
enviromment
may change frequently. For servers and desktop systems, NetworkManager
isn't
necessary and may in fact complicate administration. In these
environments, it
should be ignored or configured out."



The book was published in 2017 which means it was written in late 2016. As
much as I love that series of books (I have read them from 1st edition), I
do not expect that its comments on parts of Linux in the 3rd edition would
be useful now.

In the end, the problem is that NetworkManager, FirewallD, and other
'automatic' helpers are 'part' of the OS.. and while it was easy to tear
them out in earlier versions.. as time goes on it is not.


I like the way you called the fact that these "automatic" things are 
part of OS: the PROBLEM (in case of servers).


Every time I see these discussions on Linux lists, I tell myself how 
happy I am after fleeing servers to different OS (huh, I'll break my 
plea to not mention it: FreeBSD).


Valeri



For a car analogy, it was much easier to convert any 1970 car from
automatic back to manual as many parts were left over. Now in this era, you
can do so if you pick the right car but for a lot of them it is not going
to be easy in any form. I see the same trends in computer OS's with certain
tools which were easy to pull out now requiring you to build the whole os
from scratch as the part is assumed to be in so many other areas.





--

Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247

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Re: [CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-13 Thread Matthew Miller
On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 05:53:41PM +0100, Nicolas Kovacs wrote:
> I just came to the same conclusion. So it looks like I'll have to
> catch up and do some RTFM on NetworkManager, FirewallD (which I've
> replaced by a handcrafted iptables script) and Chrony (replaced by
> ntpd).

Whatever your views on the first two, I strongly discourage the latter
unless you have very specific functionality beyond Chrony's capability. The
original ntpd has a very large attack surface. Plus Chrony has some nice
additional features. Read more about Chrony here: 
https://opensource.com/article/18/12/manage-ntp-chrony


-- 
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Fedora Project Leader
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Re: [CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-13 Thread Nicolas Kovacs

Le 13/02/2020 à 17:50, Stephen John Smoogen a écrit :

In the end, the problem is that NetworkManager, FirewallD, and other
'automatic' helpers are 'part' of the OS.. and while it was easy to tear
them out in earlier versions.. as time goes on it is not.

For a car analogy, it was much easier to convert any 1970 car from
automatic back to manual as many parts were left over. Now in this era, you
can do so if you pick the right car but for a lot of them it is not going
to be easy in any form. I see the same trends in computer OS's with certain
tools which were easy to pull out now requiring you to build the whole os
from scratch as the part is assumed to be in so many other areas.


I just came to the same conclusion. So it looks like I'll have to catch up and 
do some RTFM on NetworkManager, FirewallD (which I've replaced by a handcrafted 
iptables script) and Chrony (replaced by ntpd).


Cheers,

Niki

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Re: [CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-13 Thread Stephen John Smoogen
On Thu, 13 Feb 2020 at 11:40, Nicolas Kovacs  wrote:

> Le 11/02/2020 à 14:11, Jonathan Billings a écrit :
> > I've mentioned on this list countless times about how NetworkManager
> > is actually pretty good for a general server.  Automatic link
> > detection and activation/deactivation, a dispatch service on link
> > activation/deactivation, support for bringing up secondary interfaces
> > after a primary goes up, a dbus interface for automation, etc.
>
> I just prepared myself to catch up and learn more about NetworkManager. So
> I
> opened my big fat "Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook 5th
> edition",
> with a text file open on the computer to take extensive notes...
>
> ... only to find out that there is only half a page on NetworkManager in
> this
> book. Allow me to quote it:
>
> "NetworkManager is primarily of use on laptops, since their network
> enviromment
> may change frequently. For servers and desktop systems, NetworkManager
> isn't
> necessary and may in fact complicate administration. In these
> environments, it
> should be ignored or configured out."
>
>
The book was published in 2017 which means it was written in late 2016. As
much as I love that series of books (I have read them from 1st edition), I
do not expect that its comments on parts of Linux in the 3rd edition would
be useful now.

In the end, the problem is that NetworkManager, FirewallD, and other
'automatic' helpers are 'part' of the OS.. and while it was easy to tear
them out in earlier versions.. as time goes on it is not.

For a car analogy, it was much easier to convert any 1970 car from
automatic back to manual as many parts were left over. Now in this era, you
can do so if you pick the right car but for a lot of them it is not going
to be easy in any form. I see the same trends in computer OS's with certain
tools which were easy to pull out now requiring you to build the whole os
from scratch as the part is assumed to be in so many other areas.



-- 
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Re: [CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-13 Thread Nicolas Kovacs

Le 11/02/2020 à 14:11, Jonathan Billings a écrit :

I've mentioned on this list countless times about how NetworkManager
is actually pretty good for a general server.  Automatic link
detection and activation/deactivation, a dispatch service on link
activation/deactivation, support for bringing up secondary interfaces
after a primary goes up, a dbus interface for automation, etc.


I just prepared myself to catch up and learn more about NetworkManager. So I 
opened my big fat "Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook 5th edition", 
with a text file open on the computer to take extensive notes...


... only to find out that there is only half a page on NetworkManager in this 
book. Allow me to quote it:


"NetworkManager is primarily of use on laptops, since their network enviromment 
may change frequently. For servers and desktop systems, NetworkManager isn't 
necessary and may in fact complicate administration. In these environments, it 
should be ignored or configured out."


H.

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Re: [CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-11 Thread Jonathan Billings
On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 06:29:29PM +0100, Nicolas Kovacs wrote:
> As much as I love CentOS (been using it since 4.x), some days I just miss
> the bone-headed approach of Slackware and FreeBSD. Just edit
> /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf or /etc/rc.conf and you're done.

Nothing is stopping you from creating and editing a service in
/etc/rc.d/init.d/ and enabling it.  systemd supports launching SysV
service files.

If you edited init files that were owned by packages, though, then you
probably had to deal with package replacing them and losing your
changes.

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Re: [CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-11 Thread Nicolas Kovacs

Le 11/02/2020 à 16:27, Stephen John Smoogen a écrit :

1. Red Hat is a company of 14,000 people many of which have diverging views
on how things should be run and why. This means that you may see 4-5
different tools to fix a problem all of which solve the part that they were
originally developed for but not for everyone (mainly because the tool that
is  solving it for everyone is still not out of design yet.)

2. systemd is maintained by multiple companies with divergent interests in
how and where to solve things. It is also not a monolithic tool but a
'hurd' of services which all do some vital plumbing. Some of that plumbing
works for some things but not all things any more than you put the same
pipe under your kitchen sink as your bathroom as the industrial cleaner..
[well you can but it will blow up somewhere.]

This leads to a lot of 'but I thought Red Hat was doing X' which is true
but 'Red Hat is also doing Y' or Z and the same for systemd and related
groups. Any time you have more than 4 of anything you will start getting
factorial number of solutions. (4 sysadmins, 4 developers, 4 managers etc..
at 5 you end up with 120 different solutions for some reason.)


As much as I love CentOS (been using it since 4.x), some days I just miss the 
bone-headed approach of Slackware and FreeBSD. Just edit 
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf or /etc/rc.conf and you're done.


:o)

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Re: [CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-11 Thread Stephen John Smoogen
On Tue, 11 Feb 2020 at 08:17, Mauricio Tavares  wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 8:12 AM Jonathan Billings 
> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 06:11:04AM +0100, Simon Matter via CentOS wrote:
> > > Unfortunately, instead of fixing/refactoring the whole bash networking
> > > script mess, another new project was started instead, called
> > > systemd-networkd :-)
> >
> > Actually, I'm sad that RHEL/CentOS 8 doesn't support
> > systemd-networkd.  It's really nice, especially for really pared down
> > systems that don't need a lot of extra services like NetworkManager.
> > But I understand that Red Hat needs to focus its support efforts.
> >
>   I thought that systemd was under redhat, so I am confused why
> they would not be pushing it instead of networkmanager. Am I missing
> something?
>

So there are two items of complexity which people have a hard time
understanding (both inside and outside of Red Hat).

1. Red Hat is a company of 14,000 people many of which have diverging views
on how things should be run and why. This means that you may see 4-5
different tools to fix a problem all of which solve the part that they were
originally developed for but not for everyone (mainly because the tool that
is  solving it for everyone is still not out of design yet.)

2. systemd is maintained by multiple companies with divergent interests in
how and where to solve things. It is also not a monolithic tool but a
'hurd' of services which all do some vital plumbing. Some of that plumbing
works for some things but not all things any more than you put the same
pipe under your kitchen sink as your bathroom as the industrial cleaner..
[well you can but it will blow up somewhere.]

This leads to a lot of 'but I thought Red Hat was doing X' which is true
but 'Red Hat is also doing Y' or Z and the same for systemd and related
groups. Any time you have more than 4 of anything you will start getting
factorial number of solutions. (4 sysadmins, 4 developers, 4 managers etc..
at 5 you end up with 120 different solutions for some reason.)



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Re: [CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-11 Thread Jonathan Billings
On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 08:17:18AM -0500, Mauricio Tavares wrote:
>   I thought that systemd was under redhat, so I am confused why
> they would not be pushing it instead of networkmanager. Am I missing
> something?

systemd has several Red Hat employees working on systemd, I believe,
but it's not a solely Red Hat product.  And according to their
documentation and tickets opened about systemd-networkd, they're
focusing on a single network infrastructure, NetworkManager.

It was available as part of the optional channel in RHEL7 but I guess
it caused too much confusion in the market or something.  It's still
kinda new and I guess having that much churn in your network
infrastructure is too much for a enterprise-level OS (given that
they'd have to backport fixes rather than bump the systemd version).


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Re: [CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-11 Thread Mauricio Tavares
On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 8:12 AM Jonathan Billings  wrote:
>
> On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 06:11:04AM +0100, Simon Matter via CentOS wrote:
> > Unfortunately, instead of fixing/refactoring the whole bash networking
> > script mess, another new project was started instead, called
> > systemd-networkd :-)
>
> Actually, I'm sad that RHEL/CentOS 8 doesn't support
> systemd-networkd.  It's really nice, especially for really pared down
> systems that don't need a lot of extra services like NetworkManager.
> But I understand that Red Hat needs to focus its support efforts.
>
  I thought that systemd was under redhat, so I am confused why
they would not be pushing it instead of networkmanager. Am I missing
something?
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Re: [CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-11 Thread Jonathan Billings
On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 06:11:04AM +0100, Simon Matter via CentOS wrote:
> Thanks for confirming that NetworkManager is not the solution for
> everyone. To me it seems that NetworkManager was developed by laptop users
> for laptop users and that's why it is what it is today. Useful for
> laptops/desktops and simple server setups.

I've mentioned on this list countless times about how NetworkManager
is actually pretty good for a general server.  Automatic link
detection and activation/deactivation, a dispatch service on link
activation/deactivation, support for bringing up secondary interfaces
after a primary goes up, a dbus interface for automation, etc.

> Unfortunately, instead of fixing/refactoring the whole bash networking
> script mess, another new project was started instead, called
> systemd-networkd :-)

Actually, I'm sad that RHEL/CentOS 8 doesn't support
systemd-networkd.  It's really nice, especially for really pared down
systems that don't need a lot of extra services like NetworkManager.
But I understand that Red Hat needs to focus its support efforts.

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Re: [CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-10 Thread Simon Matter via CentOS
> On 09/02/2020 23:55, Nicolas Kovacs wrote:
>
> Hi Nicolas,
>
> [snip]
>
>> Maybe there's a reason to make NetworkManager more or less mandatory
>> from now on, but I don't see it. So I thought I'd rather ask on this
>> list.
>
> Like you, I read about NetworkManager becoming the default tool for
> CentOS 8. So I sat down with a colleague to figure out how we could use
> NetworkManager, and convert our existing network configs (on CentOS 6
> and 7) to work with NetworkManager.
>
> I'm sad to report that we ran into at least 3 issues (listed below). We
> found solutions to the first two, but the last one was a show-stopper,
> and we came to the conclusion that for servers, NetworkManager is still
> overkill, and for us, actually unusable. So even on CentOS 8, we will
> keep using the legacy scripts.
>
> 1. When NetworkManager activates interfaces, it does not wait for IPv6
> DAD to complete. This makes systemd reach the "network-online" target
> before IPv6 is fully initialised, and some daemons fail to start. We
> eventually found a work-around, but not before I'd lost some of my hair.
>
> 2. NetworkManager doesn't know how to activate dummy interfaces from
> ifcfg-dummy* files. You have to create dummy interfaces directly in
> NetworkManager. This is not a problem on CentOS 8, but on CentOS 7,
> there is a subtle issue with loading the dummy module that makes things
> fail at boot. We again found the solution, but it's annoying that none
> of it was documented.
>
> 3. Some of our servers run full routing daemons (BIRD), and have
> multiple route tables. On these, when we start NetworkManager, it
> attempts to read the entire route tables into memory using the netlink
> API. This makes it log lots of errors. Then, NetworkManager's RAM usage
> goes up and up, going to over 3 GB!! Finally, it barfs and dies. And
> then systemd starts it again, and it goes and does the same.
>
> We have NOT been able to find any solution to this stupidity of
> NetworkManager. And so we have made the choice to abandon it, and remain
> with legacy network scripts.

Thanks for confirming that NetworkManager is not the solution for
everyone. To me it seems that NetworkManager was developed by laptop users
for laptop users and that's why it is what it is today. Useful for
laptops/desktops and simple server setups.

Unfortunately, instead of fixing/refactoring the whole bash networking
script mess, another new project was started instead, called
systemd-networkd :-)

Regards,
Simon

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Re: [CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-10 Thread Anand Buddhdev
On 09/02/2020 23:55, Nicolas Kovacs wrote:

Hi Nicolas,

[snip]

> Maybe there's a reason to make NetworkManager more or less mandatory
> from now on, but I don't see it. So I thought I'd rather ask on this list.

Like you, I read about NetworkManager becoming the default tool for
CentOS 8. So I sat down with a colleague to figure out how we could use
NetworkManager, and convert our existing network configs (on CentOS 6
and 7) to work with NetworkManager.

I'm sad to report that we ran into at least 3 issues (listed below). We
found solutions to the first two, but the last one was a show-stopper,
and we came to the conclusion that for servers, NetworkManager is still
overkill, and for us, actually unusable. So even on CentOS 8, we will
keep using the legacy scripts.

1. When NetworkManager activates interfaces, it does not wait for IPv6
DAD to complete. This makes systemd reach the "network-online" target
before IPv6 is fully initialised, and some daemons fail to start. We
eventually found a work-around, but not before I'd lost some of my hair.

2. NetworkManager doesn't know how to activate dummy interfaces from
ifcfg-dummy* files. You have to create dummy interfaces directly in
NetworkManager. This is not a problem on CentOS 8, but on CentOS 7,
there is a subtle issue with loading the dummy module that makes things
fail at boot. We again found the solution, but it's annoying that none
of it was documented.

3. Some of our servers run full routing daemons (BIRD), and have
multiple route tables. On these, when we start NetworkManager, it
attempts to read the entire route tables into memory using the netlink
API. This makes it log lots of errors. Then, NetworkManager's RAM usage
goes up and up, going to over 3 GB!! Finally, it barfs and dies. And
then systemd starts it again, and it goes and does the same.

We have NOT been able to find any solution to this stupidity of
NetworkManager. And so we have made the choice to abandon it, and remain
with legacy network scripts.

Regards,
Anand
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Re: [CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-10 Thread Chris Adams
Once upon a time, Stephen John Smoogen  said:
> The reason is that having 1 way to configure networks makes it so the
> developer and tech support only have to diagnose issues from 1 set of tools
> versus two different ones (and occasionally 2 competing ones if both are
> trying to do their job at the same time).

Not only that - the hodge-podge bash network scripts are kind of a mess.
It is impressive that they do what they do so reliably after so long,
but every new feature appears to have been hacked in by a different
developer, leaving parts of them almost indecipherable.

That's not intended as a criticism of the scripts or the people who
wrote that code - it's just that IMHO they managed to go beyond what is
reasonable in bash scripting, which makes for a difficult to read (and
I'm sure fix/extend) set of scripts.

And even on servers now, there are often dynamic network changes that
work much better with NetworkManager than the old-style static scripts.
Containers, VMs, and VPNs all come and go, and work better with a single
system configuring their networks (rather than each layer implementing
their own setup).
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Re: [CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-10 Thread Stephen John Smoogen
On Mon, 10 Feb 2020 at 02:55, Nicolas Kovacs  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm currently reading the upstream "Considerations in adopting RHEL 8"
> document. The chapter about networking states that traditional networking
> scripts (shipped with the network-scripts package) are considered obsolete.
>
> I bluntly admit I don't see the point in this. As far as I'm concerned,
> I've
> been a happy user of NetworkManager since the early days (when folks used
> to
> call it NotworkManager :oD). It's one of those nifty pieces of software
> that
> brought the Linux desktop to the masses - or at least a bit nearer to them
> -
> since it allows managing wireless and wired interfaces transparently and
> easily
> on a laptop or any computer with a wireless card.
>
> On servers though, one of the first post-installation steps I performed
> was to
> get rid of Network-Manager and all its components. The servers I'm working
> on
> are relatively small-scale and have from one to four network interfaces.
> Each
> interface has a corresponding configuration in
> /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts,
> and that's it. From there, I rarely - if ever - touch it. In all my
> setups,
> NetworkManager is merely a useless layer of abstraction, and I like
> sticking to
> the KISS principle and shave off useless layers.
>
> Maybe there's a reason to make NetworkManager more or less mandatory from
> now
> on, but I don't see it. So I thought I'd rather ask on this list.
>
>
The reason is that having 1 way to configure networks makes it so the
developer and tech support only have to diagnose issues from 1 set of tools
versus two different ones (and occasionally 2 competing ones if both are
trying to do their job at the same time). Basically network-scripts has
been on the backburner for 10+ years and has to be dusted off every now and
then to add a new networking corner case or some other item. For the
developer it usually means context swapping back from python (or whatever
language they prefer) to bash and then figure out what the problem is..
cause a couple of new ones they then have to fix and then get it right. Or
they could do that work in 1 language they know and get it done.

Does it makes sense to us as sysadmins who are happy with a working set of
scripts and configs we have to know possibly rewrite? No it doesn't.. but
unless one of us takes over the network-scripts and puts in the work to
make it work in all the different layers (or pay someone to do so).. we get
what the soup kitchen serves :).



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[CentOS] NetworkManager on servers

2020-02-09 Thread Nicolas Kovacs

Hi,

I'm currently reading the upstream "Considerations in adopting RHEL 8" 
document. The chapter about networking states that traditional networking 
scripts (shipped with the network-scripts package) are considered obsolete.


I bluntly admit I don't see the point in this. As far as I'm concerned, I've 
been a happy user of NetworkManager since the early days (when folks used to 
call it NotworkManager :oD). It's one of those nifty pieces of software that 
brought the Linux desktop to the masses - or at least a bit nearer to them - 
since it allows managing wireless and wired interfaces transparently and easily 
on a laptop or any computer with a wireless card.


On servers though, one of the first post-installation steps I performed was to 
get rid of Network-Manager and all its components. The servers I'm working on 
are relatively small-scale and have from one to four network interfaces. Each 
interface has a corresponding configuration in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts, 
and that's it. From there, I rarely - if ever - touch it. In all my setups, 
NetworkManager is merely a useless layer of abstraction, and I like sticking to 
the KISS principle and shave off useless layers.


Maybe there's a reason to make NetworkManager more or less mandatory from now 
on, but I don't see it. So I thought I'd rather ask on this list.


Cheers from the foggy South of France,

Niki
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