Bug 636108

Summary:	RFE: interface: provide NetworkManager backend for configuring host interfaces
Product:	[Community] Virtualization Tools	Reporter:	Daniel Berrangé <berrange>
Component:	libvirt	Assignee:	Libvirt Maintainers <libvirt-maint>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	unspecified	CC:	crobinso, laine, rkhan, xen-maint
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2019-02-06 23:47:04 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:
Bug Blocks:	636029

Description Daniel Berrangé 2010-09-21 14:24:21 UTC

Description of problem:
The current netcf backend in libvirt requires root privileges to operate. It should be possible to provide an alternative implementation that talks to NetworkManager to perform changes. This will work as root and non-root.

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Comment 1 Laine Stump 2010-09-21 17:16:17 UTC

A current blocker is of course that NM doesn't support the configuration of bridge interfaces. AFAIK, the plan to make that happen is still to have NM use netcf, but no resources have been put on that project.

Since NM is written in python, one prerequisite of that is python bindings for netcf.

I'm not sure where upstream NetworkManager's equivalent of bugzilla is located.

Comment 2 Daniel Berrangé 2010-09-21 17:34:33 UTC

Even if NM doesn't yet support bridges, there's still value in letting unprivileged users configure plain eth/wifi interfaces via libvirt, so that NAT based connectivity can be setup. In fact for qemu://session that's pretty much all we want to be able todo via NM. Only changing qemu://system is dependant on bridging/bonding/vlans

Which reminds me that the libvirt/netcf XML/API doesn't have any way to provide wifi keys, or ESSID, channel, etc :-)

Comment 3 Thomas Graf 2011-11-11 17:02:37 UTC

Just a FYI, I'm working on getting both bonding and bridging support into NM and it will be available for RHEL7.0.

Can you elaborate on the interfaces you would need on NM's side?

I'd rather have netcf or a small python script be able to write an ifcfg file unprivleged and have NM pick it.

Comment 4 Cole Robinson 2019-02-06 23:47:04 UTC

This is a nice idea, but since the interface APIs never really took off with applications and netcf has more or less languished, I don't think this will ever be implemented, nor is it worth tracking