Description of feature request: NetworkManager should detect network address conflicts upon bringing up interfaces and let the user decide what to do. Last week I connected my HTC Desire Android phone to my Fedora 13 laptop and tethered it to connect to the internet. It didn't work. After a bit of investigation this was caused by an IP address range conflict caused by the phone assigning the same network address range (192.168.100.100/24) as one of my libvirt 'private' bridges. Shutting down the offending bridge made it work (obviously) Since I'm a network expert this was quickly found. A regular user will NOT know how to solve this problem therefore NetworkManager should detect the problem and let the user decide what to do. For example: decide what interface to shut down, bring the new interface up and shut another down or not bring the new interface up at all, etc. This is a usability issue.
Dan, I'd love to see this in F15 :-)
ping
“This is a usability issue.“ This is probably a good idea but NM has so many more important issues that I don't belive this is a priority now. But a warning application could probably be prototyped separately from NetworkManager. BTW, it is not very useful to bother non-expert users with decisions like that, so NM would have to act automatically either by stopping the older of the conflicting connections or at least prioritize the new one for routing.
My whole point is that this is something that can be handled by _any_ user very easily: NM has detected that network X and network Y will not function correctly when active simultaneously, what do you want to do? 1- use network X 2- use network Y how easy is that? ;-)
“how easy is that? ;-)” I understand you but I don't think it's a good idea to interrupt the user and make him decide, if it's not absolutely necessary. NetworkManager should work without user interaction, and even has to work on servers. Even on desktop/laptop, it is better if the networking “just works”. In some environments user network configuration may be even disabled.
agree. then don't do this in the core, but in the gnome applet :-) or allow something like a plugin to handle this through some sort of callback/notification. you could then have interactive (desktop), noop (servers), etc. handlers.
“or allow something like a plugin to handle this through some sort of callback/notification.” It could be, and it could be even configurable. I suggest moving this request in the Gnome bugzilla. As you can see, it's here since 2010. But it may happen there too, as NM needs work in many areas.
moved to https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=690212