Comment 24 for bug 256054

Ok. A quick heads up on what is planned. Please comment in case you think it won't fit your need.

We will introduce a new config for /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf that reads like:

[ifupdown]
managed=true/false

The default will be "false" for intrepid and depending on how well it works and how well the ifupdown plugin evolves over time we might make this "true" for jaunty.

So what does this mean:

1. in unmanaged mode (managed=false), ifupdown plugin will tell networkmanager to not touch devices whose hal interface.name is configured in /etc/network/interfaces; unmanaged mode doesnt require any changes to the debian ifupdown package itself. Configurations for interfaces in /etc/network/interfaces that have no matching device will still be made available in networkmanager. However, since they are not locked to any device it wont hurt.

2. in managed mode (managed=true), ifupdown plugin will tell networkmanager to "lock" the parsed configuration to devices by mac address. The device the connection configuration gets locked to will be determined by the interface.name. So configurations like:

  iface eth0 inet static ...

will make networkmanager to always use that configuration for the device whose hal info has the interface.name "eth0".

3. in managed mode, we make ifup -a to not auto up the interfaces configured in /etc/network/interfaces. To make this happen we will add an iniparser to the ifupdown package that will teach ifupdown to honour /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf appropriately.