the way networkmanager stores and passes network information

not sure what your use case is for pre-up/post-down; please explain.

For the sys connection: go to the applet, configure a connection and flag it as "Available to all users". that will create a config file in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections; you should be able to copy that from one machine to others.

Well, the old (command line) style ifup/down tools usually run four different types of scripts in /etc/network:

if-pre-up, if-up, if-down, if-post-down , which makes sense since several tasks need to be done before taking the interface up or after putting it down. e.g. Firewall configuration, traffic counters etc.

Network Manager tries to mimic that but only has two phases, up and down. The other two important phases are missing.

Furthermore, Network Manager does not pass the usual and required information as environment variables to the scripts to be run. E.g. network name, other configuration parameters, DHCP parameters given by the DHCP server (such as DNS configuration) are not passed down to the scripts.

Network Manager is rather incomplete work and does not yet fit into the ubuntu/debian framework.

regards
Hadmut

> if-pre-up, if-up, if-down, if-post-down , which makes sense since several tasks need to be done
> before taking the interface up or after putting it down. e.g. Firewall configuration, traffic counters etc.

Can you come up with a list of use-cases that are currently doable in the scripts? That would help me a lot.

> Furthermore, Network Manager does not pass the usual and required information as environment
> variables to the scripts to be run. E.g. network name, other configuration parameters, DHCP
> parameters given by the DHCP server (such as DNS configuration) are not passed down to the scripts.

Same here, could you assemble a complete list of usual environment variables missing?

> Network Manager is rather incomplete work and does not yet fit into the ubuntu/debian framework.

that kind of discussion is better done outside a bug - anyway, help to make it better by providing facts like above.

Well, to get a list of use cases of current ubuntu just run

apt-file search /etc/network/if-pre-up.d
apt-file search /etc/network/if-post-down.d

and I have my own scripts to configure iptables according to the given network settings, or to set parameters in /proc/sys/...

About environment variables: There is no "complete" list, since the ifup/ifdown scripts allow to use arbitrary configuration directives in /etc/network/interfaces which are passed as an environment variable to the scripts, upcased with a IF_ prefix. Plenty of programs like the vlan configuration make use of this method to allow arbitrary environments. E.g. have an entry like

  fw hidenat

in the interfaces file is passed as environment IF_FW=hidenat. So you can use whatever you want as parameters to your scripts.

The default environments generated by ifup/ifdown can be found by running a test script or having a look in the source code, i.e.

IF_* (all those arbitrary configuration parameters as stated above)
IFACE (interface name like eth0 )
LOGICAL (logical interface)
MODE (e.g. "start", don't know details)
PHASE (e.g. post-up)
VERBOSITY (0,1)
ADDRFAM (inet,...)
IF_ADDRESS (ip-address)
IF_GATEWAY (router)
IF_METRIC (route metric)
IF_NETMASK

and maybe additional data like WLAN netname.

There are still several open issues before network-manager smoothly fits into the debian/ubuntu environment. These are just some of them.

regards
Hadmut

Ah, and btw., the parameters passed by the DHCP server should also be given as environment parameters.

the script in /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/01ifupdown supports the pre-up/post-down phases, but obviously the NetworkManager does not call it for these phases.

Comment #2 looks like Debian bug 568954:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=568954

Actually Ubuntu bug #336736, Debian 518368, and Gnome 600167 are probably a better match.