Releases/FeatureNetworkManager

= NetworkManager =

Summary
We need to finish the connection settings UI, implement the system settings daemon (not critical path), and add support for multiple devices (not critical path).

Owner

 * Name: DanWilliams

Current status

 * Targeted release:  Fedora 8
 * Last modified: 26 Oct 2007
 * Percentage of completion: 95%

Included in the distro but not on by default. There's about 2 - 3 months to get it into a really awesome state, and that stuff can be added later without breaking D-Bus API. Could use some help: e-mail the owners if you would like to contribute.

Update: Config D-Bus interface is done. wpa_supplicant over D-Bus needs work for ad-hoc support, but is not critical as it only blocks ad-hoc (apparently was broken in 0.6.x by accident and nobody complained). Multiple device support will be worked on post-F8-release once the connection settings UI has reached functional parity with 0.6.5. (2 Oct 2007)

Update: still need to backport the 'frequency' wpa_supplicant config option from wpa_supplicant 0.6.x, which means ad-hoc network _creation_ will be broken. Main outstanding features left are (a) connect wired by default if no connections are present (for livecds mainly), and (b) convert GConf keys from old format to new format. F8 should ship with a version of NM 0.7 that has feature parity with 0.6.5 from F7. (26 Oct 2007)

Update: New installs (live-cds included) will connect by default to live ethernet connections. GConf settings conversion code is in SVN and has already been built as an update to Fedora 8. EAP-PEAP support has also been added. (26 Nov 2007)

Dan recently posted an update on the status of NetworkManager in test3: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-October/msg00125.html

Usage cases/rationale

 * Need to handle multiple internet devices
 * Need to support servers -- no GUI: no applet.

Dependencies
libnl, wpa_supplicant

REQUIRED
Finish talking to wpa_supplicant over D-Bus (est. 1 week)
 * Can't set channels right now because wpa_supplicant does not support it. Need this done.  This is important for ad-hoc networking because many drivers require this for ad-hoc. It is also important for connection sharing as ad-hoc is a requirement there.
 * Add BLOB support to wpa_supplicant's D-Bus interface to push certificate data to wpa_supplicant rather than use file paths (DONE)

Configuration interface (est 1.5 weeks)
 * We need to verify values more aggressively as NetworkManager requests them from the settings services (DONE)
 * Need to create a system-settings-daemon to push system-wide info (stuff from /etc/sysconfig or GConf, etc) to NetworkManager (Soeren Sandmann is working on this, mostly done)

Multiple device support (est. 3 weeks) (punted to F8-later)
 * Need to take advantage of the new libnl support for touching the routing table (makes code cleaner, but not required)
 * Don't disable other devices when a device is chosen
 * Update applets to handle multiple active devices and show which one is "default" device

NIS support
 * Start/stop ypbind when required? (could be done from the NetworkManagerDispatcher script quite easily)

OPTIONAL
Logging
 * Sanitize debug printing
 * Add support for error levels
 * move log to /var/log/NetworkManager.log

Backport to FC6/7
 * Need to update libnl, wpa_supplicant

iwlib
 * Probably can remove all calls for iwlib in NM. Calls to getrange, etc. can be pushed to wpa_supplicant via dbus.

GUI configuration
 * would be a nice add-on but as long as sysadmins can get their system to use NetworkManager via firstboot, we should be fine here

Other devices
 * Bluetooth support
 * PPP support
 * Both should be pluggable if we do the configuration stuff right

Share Device
 * would be nice to be able to share a wired device through a wireless connection.

Documentation
http://live.gnome.org/NetworkManagerToDo http://live.gnome.org/NetworkManagerConfiguration

Comments
See also ../FeatureRockSolidWireless -- MatthiasClasen

I would argue that the following bugs need to be resolved before NetworkManager is turned on by default:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=218237 NM startup/shutdown order. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=199536 Wired IP released too early.

-- OrionPoplawski