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Adding and Editing NetworkManager Connections via CLI

Summary

Support for adding and editing new NetworkManager connections using the nmcli commandline tool.

Owner

Current status

  • Targeted release: Fedora 20
  • Last updated: 2013-10-14
  • Tracker bug: #998530
  • Percentage of completion: 100%

Detailed Description

NetworkManagers command line interface nmcli will get new functionality and be able to add, edit, delete, activate and deactivate connections.

Benefit to Fedora

Users more comfortable with the command-line will now have a capable network configuration tool in addition to directly editing network configuration files. Adding and changing network connections is a common task and should be easy to do from the command-line, in addition to GUI tools like nm-connection-editor. These enhancements will add support for configuring all major network connection types supported by NetworkManager (including bridge, bond, vlan, wifi, ethernet, 3G/4G, etc.) from an interactive mode of nmcli. nmcli can be used as a full replacement for existing UI tools. nmcli can also create easily parsable output intended for scripting so that shell scripts have an easier access to the dbus interface.

Scope

Upgrade/compatibility impact

Some of the arguments to nmcli will change, which may impact scripts. Reasonable efforts to interpret the old option formats will be made.

How To Test

Create a connection using nmcli and check that it was successful. Use the edit mode of nmcli to modify existing connections. It is especially interesting to test various and less common connection types beside ethernet and wifi.

User Experience

Users comfortable with the command-line can run nmcli in an interactive mode to create or edit network connections through an interface similar to mysql or fdisk.

Dependencies

None.

Contingency Plan

  • Contingency mechanism: Administrators can continue hand-editing configuration files in keyfile or ifcfg format. For desktop users there are other UI configuration tools such as nm-connection-editor.
  • Contingency deadline: N/A
  • Blocks release? N/A

Documentation

Documentation will be drafted at Networking/CLI.

Release Notes

NetworkManager's nmcli command-line tool now supports adding and editing network connections.