There are various problems with GATEWAYDEV, specifically that it uses device names, and there's no way to sanely modify it from a GUI if the device you'd like to set as the gateway dev isn't plugged in, you don't have persistent device names, etc. We shouldn't be requiring the user to type in a freeform text field what device name to use here. Plus, if the NM connection you are editing isn't locked to a device, we dont' know the device name to use, since it's a per-connection setting and not global like GATEWAYDEV is. So, the proposal is to expand usage of DEFROUTE in the ifcfg files. If DEFROUTE=no, then 'ifup' for that ifcfg should not touch the default route. That's done for PPP apparently, but not for the other device types. NM will write out DEFROUTE to the ifcfg file based on the "Only use this connection for resources on its network" checkbox, and leave GATEWAYDEV alone. NM will still honor GATEWAYDEV when its set though.
See https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=528281 for the NM side of this.
The assumption is that no DEFROUTE implies DEFROUTE=yes, correct?
(In reply to comment #2) > The assumption is that no DEFROUTE implies DEFROUTE=yes, correct? Yes; that should be how it currently works in initscripts, and how NetworkManager works as well. Obviously if DEFROUTE=yes for ifcfg-eth2 but GATEWAYDEV=eth0, then eth2 still doesn't get the default route.
http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=initscripts.git;a=commitdiff;h=a23c3828e092315e71ba4d5e6befc060a4f2c07a Will be in 9.02-1.
code is there and looks correct ... 9.02-1 is in F12