Networking
NetworkManager with system wide connections and enhanced support for Mobile Broadband
NetworkManager can now create and edit system-wide network connections in /etc/sysconfig. NetworkManager has been able to read information about system-wide network connections from /etc/sysconfig for a while. Now we have enabled full read-write support for system connections. The ability to create or modify new system connections will be controlled by PolicyKit policies. Initially, only wired/wireless connections will be supported. Later on, vpn connections will follow. For connections that require secrets, those will be stored in .keys files in /etc/sysconfig.
By providing a database of preconfigured mobile broadband providers, supporting more hardware and permit to scan GSM networks, NetworkManager makes the use of mobile broadband much easier. Your broadband provider will be automatically recognized by NetworkManager and it will make it easy to just plug it your USB device and get you online within minutes.
Enhanced IPV6 Support in NetworkManager
For non GUI users, and those that use ifcfg files directly, NetworkMangaer should bring up the interface with IPv6 connectivity correctly at boot. No modification of the ifcfg files should be necessary.
For GUI users, a new IPv6 tab will appear in the connection editor which will allow for control if the IPv6 settings similar to control of IPv4 settings already. After selecting the configuration method ("auto" is the default, which will honor router-advertisements and attempt to retrieve DNS information with DHCPv6 information-only mode) and entering any additional settings they may wish to use, then saving the connection, activating that connection should configure the interface fully with IPv6 as requested by the user.
NetworkManager System Connections
NetworkManager has been able to read information about system-wide network connections from /etc/sysconfig for a while. This feature is about enabling full read-write support for system connections. The ability to create or modify new system connections will be controlled by PolicyKit policies.
Initially, only wired/wireless connections will be supported. Later on, vpn connections will follow.
For connections that require secrets, those will be stored in .keys files in /etc/sysconfig.
Network Interface Management
Configuring the network interfaces on a machine for moderately complicated yet common scenarios is generally only accessible to advanced users, and very poorly supported by existing tools. Such scenarios include creating a bridge and enslaving a physical NIC to it, or bonding two NIC's, adding a VLAN interface to the bond and enslaving that to a bridge.
Complicated bridge setups are commonly needed on virtualized hosts, and often have to be performed remotely by higher-level management tools, rather than a human user.
This feature addresses these needs by providing a general-purpose network configuration library (netcf) and additions to the libvirt API to expose netcf's local API through libvirt's remoting facilities.
With netcf, a logical network interface (e.g. a bridge and its
slaves) is described as a unit, and netcf takes care of
translating that description into the appropriate ifcfg-*
files. To guarantee the happy coexistence of netcf with other
network configuration utilities, including vi,
netcf is bidirectional: it modifies ifcfg-* files
based on a netcf interface description, but also reads
ifcfg-* files to generate such a description. It is therefore
possible to use netcf side-by-side with any other method of
changing network configuration, and many of the pitfalls of earlier
attempts to do this, e.g., the Xen networking scripts, are avoided.
It is planned to switch NetworkManager to netcf as the backend
for system-wide network configuration in a future release; while it's not part of this feature,
it will further unify the user experience around network configuration. In
the same vein, it is planned to expose network configuration functionality
in a future release of virt-manager
Bluetooth Service On Demand
In order to support bluetooth devices, bluetooth background service was started by default in previous versions of Fedora. In this release, bluetooth service is started on demand when needed and automatically stops 30 seconds after last device use instead reducing initial startup time and resources.
NFS V4 Default
The latest version of the NFS protocol is version 4, which was first introduced in Fedora F-2 (the first distro to have such support). The current default NFS version is version 3. Meaning when an simple NFS mount is done (i.e. mount server:/export /mnt) version 3 is the first protocol version that is tried.
In Fedora 12, version 4 is tried first. If the server does not support version 4, the mount would then try version 3.