On 23/10/2007, Bruno Wolff III bruno@wolff.to wrote:
NetworkManager doesn't seem to be evolving toward providing full use of the network tools (e.g. multiple networks on an interface, bridging, routing, QoS). It seems to be very oriented toward convenient use in simple cases.
If it is not going to ever give access to the more advanced networking features, I think there is a reason to replace the current network configuration scripts with something like etcnet.
Sure you can add commands in rc.local to set up the network properly, but then ifup and ifdown don't work correctly (in the general case) and neither does changing between run levels where the network gets turned off or on.
etcnet does seem to be continuing to be developed, but it looks like they aren't continuing to provide Fedora specific installations.
As mentioned in the thread back in 2005, the first step would be submitting etcnet to for inclusion as a Fedora package. That can happen independently of whether or not discussions of replacing network-scripts happens, and what the outcome of them are.
FWIW, I'd quite like to see etcnet in the repo as an alternative, so if you want some help packaging it, drop me a line. That said, the thing that is very unappealing to me about its design is the multitude of configuration files distributed over several subdirectories. That's subjective though.
Jonathan.