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Thomas Haller bd2d71754b device: generate unique default route-metrics per interface
In the past we had NMDefaultRouteManager which would coordinate adding
the default-route with identical metrics. That especially happened, when
activating two devices of the same type, without explicitly specifying
ipv4.route-metric. For example, with ethernet devices, the routes on
both interfaces would get a metric of 100.

Coordinating routes was especially necessary, because we added
routes with NLM_F_EXCL flag, akin to `ip route replace`. We not
only had to avoid that activating two devices in NetworkManager would
result in a fight over the default-route, but more importently
to preserve externally added default-routes on unmanaged interfaces.

NMDefaultRouteManager would ensure that in case of duplicate
metrics, that the device that activated first would keep the
best default-route. It would do so by bumping the metric
of the second device to find a unused metric. The bumping itself
was not very important -- MDefaultRouteManager could also just not
configure any default-routes that show up as second, the result
would be quite similar. More important was to keep the best
default-route on the first activating device until the device
deactivates or a device activates that really has a better
default-route..

Likewise, NMRouteManager would globally manage non-default-routes.
It would not do any bumping of metrics, but it would also ensure that the routes
of the device that activates first are not overwritten by a device activating
later.

However, the `ip route replace` approach has downsides, especially
that it messes with routes on other interfaces, interfaces that are
possibly not managed by NetworkManager. Another downside is, that
binding a socket to an interface might not result in correct
routes, because the route might just not be there (in case of
NMRouteManager, which wouldn't configure duplicate routes by bumping
their metric).

Since commit 77ec302714 we would no longer
use NLM_F_EXCL, but add routes akin to `ip route append`. When
activating for example two ethernet devices with no explict route
metric configuration, there are two routes like

   default via 10.16.122.254 dev eth0 proto dhcp metric 100
   default via 192.168.100.1 dev eth1 proto dhcp metric 100

This does not only affect default routes. In case of a multi-homing
setup you'd get

  192.168.100.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.100.1 metric 100
  192.168.100.0/24 dev eth1 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.100.1 metric 100

but it's visible the most for default-routes.

Note that we would append the routes that are activated later, as the order
of `ip route show` confirms. One might hence expect, that kernel selects
a route based on the order in the routing tables. However, that isn't
the case, and activating the second interface will non-deterministically
re-route traffic via the new interface. That will interfere badly with
with NAT, stateful firewalls, and existing connections (like TCP).

The solution is to have NMManager keep a global index of the default route-metrics
currently in use. So, instead of determining the default-route metric based solely
on the device-type, we now in addition generate default metrics that do not
overlap. For example, if you activate eth0 first, it gets route-metric 100,
and if you then activate eth1, it gets 101. Note that if you deactivate
and re-activate eth0, then it will get route-metric 102, because the
best route should stick on eth1 (which reserves the range 100 to 101).

Note that when a connection explititly selects a particular metric, then that
choice is honored (contrary to NMDefaultRouteManager which was more concerned
with avoiding conflicts, then keeping the exact metric).

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1505893
(cherry picked from commit 6a32c64d8f)
2017-12-15 11:44:52 +01:00
clients cli: avoid out-of-bounds-read for show_device_info() 2017-12-12 11:21:05 +01:00
contrib platform: merge nm_platform_*_delete() delete functions 2017-12-11 19:00:41 +01:00
data systemd: let "NetworkManager-wait-online.service" require "NetworkManager.service" 2017-11-02 15:21:42 +01:00
dispatcher build: merge "dispatcher/tests/Makefile.am" into toplevel Makefile 2016-10-21 17:37:56 +02:00
docs man: add OpenVSwitch overview 2017-10-30 21:46:55 +01:00
examples examples: add python/gi example nm-connection-update-stable-id.py 2017-12-06 09:32:26 +01:00
introspection settings: support setting a connection as volatile via Update2() 2017-12-06 09:35:43 +01:00
libnm libnm-core: add functionality for dealing with tc-style traffic filter specifiers 2017-12-11 19:40:22 +01:00
libnm-core utils: extend binary-search to return the first/last index 2017-12-15 11:44:51 +01:00
libnm-glib all: use cast macros instead of C cast 2017-12-06 10:44:44 +01:00
libnm-util all: avoid coverity warnings about "Wrong Check of Return Value" 2017-10-30 14:10:56 +01:00
m4 build: disable lcov version check 2017-10-20 17:16:22 +02:00
man device: make carrier-wait-timeout configurable per device 2017-11-28 10:56:22 +01:00
po po: translations from the Red Hat translators 2017-12-12 11:01:34 +01:00
shared release: bump version to 1.10.3 (development) 2017-12-12 02:45:52 +01:00
src device: generate unique default route-metrics per interface 2017-12-15 11:44:52 +01:00
tools tools: fix the PowerPC build 2017-06-28 18:35:23 +02:00
vapi vapi: add vapi NM-1.0 for libnm 2016-11-03 10:15:42 +01:00
.dir-locals.el misc: add toplevel .dir-locals file that tells Emacs to show trailing whitespace 2013-03-08 15:15:28 +01:00
.gitignore gitignore: readd removed libnm-core/tests/test-setting* programs 2017-12-08 11:33:01 +01:00
.travis.yml travis: fix travis build to use Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) 2017-07-25 16:24:34 +02:00
AUTHORS misc: update maintainers and authors 2016-04-21 13:39:03 -05:00
autogen.sh build: fix gtk-doc/introspection handling for build 2016-11-28 12:43:51 +01:00
ChangeLog Changelog: remove and replace the changelog by a stub 2017-02-14 17:39:46 +01:00
configure.ac release: bump version to 1.10.3 (development) 2017-12-12 02:45:52 +01:00
CONTRIBUTING Make licensing of contributions more explicit 2017-07-25 07:16:35 +02:00
COPYING docs: create new master NM documentation module 2011-02-16 16:24:16 -06:00
linker-script-binary.ver iface-helper/build: add linker version script 2016-10-13 21:33:33 +02:00
linker-script-devices.ver devices/build: use one linker-script-devices.ver for all device plugins 2016-10-13 21:36:06 +02:00
linker-script-settings.ver settings/build: add linker version script for settings plugins 2016-10-13 21:33:33 +02:00
MAINTAINERS misc: update maintainers and authors 2016-04-21 13:39:03 -05:00
Makefile.am keyfile/tests: test tc qdisc reading and writing 2017-12-11 19:06:28 +01:00
Makefile.examples examples: add python/gi example nm-connection-update-stable-id.py 2017-12-06 09:32:26 +01:00
Makefile.glib build: include "config.h" in nm*enum-types.c sources 2015-10-05 15:01:38 +02:00
Makefile.vapigen build: fix make always re-making vapigen target 2016-10-21 18:46:03 +02:00
NetworkManager.pc.in build: update NetworkManager.pc 2013-01-29 16:17:30 -05:00
NEWS release: update NEWS 2017-12-12 01:03:17 +01:00
README trivial: typo fixes 2010-09-25 00:34:10 -05:00
TODO TODO: Remove Proxies from the list of TODO 2016-10-04 11:44:44 +02:00
valgrind.suppressions valgrind: update glib2 suppression for Fedora 27 2017-11-15 17:06:18 +01:00
zanata.xml po: add Zanata configuration 2016-04-05 14:35:53 +02:00

******************
2008-12-11: NetworkManager core daemon has moved to git.freedesktop.org!

git clone git://git.freedesktop.org/git/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.git
******************


Networking that Just Works
--------------------------

NetworkManager attempts to keep an active network connection available at all
times.  The point of NetworkManager is to make networking configuration and
setup as painless and automatic as possible.  NetworkManager is intended to
replace default route, replace other routes, set IP addresses, and in general
configure networking as NM sees fit (with the possibility of manual override as
necessary).  In effect, the goal of NetworkManager is to make networking Just
Work with a minimum of user hassle, but still allow customization and a high
level of manual network control.  If you have special needs, we'd like to hear
about them, but understand that NetworkManager is not intended for every
use-case.

NetworkManager will attempt to keep every network device in the system up and
active, as long as the device is available for use (has a cable plugged in,
the killswitch isn't turned on, etc).  Network connections can be set to
'autoconnect', meaning that NetworkManager will make that connection active
whenever it and the hardware is available.

"Settings services" store lists of user- or administrator-defined "connections",
which contain all the settings and parameters required to connect to a specific
network.  NetworkManager will _never_ activate a connection that is not in this
list, or that the user has not directed NetworkManager to connect to.


How it works:

The NetworkManager daemon runs as a privileged service (since it must access
and control hardware), but provides a D-Bus interface on the system bus to
allow for fine-grained control of networking.  NetworkManager does not store
connections or settings, it is only the mechanism by which those connections
are selected and activated.

To store pre-defined network connections, two separate services, the "system
settings service" and the "user settings service" store connection information
and provide these to NetworkManager, also via D-Bus.  Each settings service
can determine how and where it persistently stores the connection information;
for example, the GNOME applet stores its configuration in GConf, and the system
settings service stores it's config in distro-specific formats, or in a distro-
agnostic format, depending on user/administrator preference.

A variety of other system services are used by NetworkManager to provide
network functionality: wpa_supplicant for wireless connections and 802.1x
wired connections, pppd for PPP and mobile broadband connections, DHCP clients
for dynamic IP addressing, dnsmasq for proxy nameserver and DHCP server
functionality for internet connection sharing, and avahi-autoipd for IPv4
link-local addresses.  Most communication with these daemons occurs, again,
via D-Bus.


Why doesn't my network Just Work?

Driver problems are the #1 cause of why NetworkManager sometimes fails to
connect to wireless networks.  Often, the driver simply doesn't behave in a
consistent manner, or is just plain buggy.  NetworkManager supports _only_
those drivers that are shipped with the upstream Linux kernel, because only
those drivers can be easily fixed and debugged.  ndiswrapper, vendor binary
drivers, or other out-of-tree drivers may or may not work well with
NetworkManager, precisely because they have not been vetted and improved by the
open-source community, and because problems in these drivers usually cannot
be fixed.

Sometimes, command-line tools like 'iwconfig' will work, but NetworkManager will
fail.  This is again often due to buggy drivers, because these drivers simply
aren't expecting the dynamic requests that NetworkManager and wpa_supplicant
make.  Driver bugs should be filed in the bug tracker of the distribution being
run, since often distributions customize their kernel and drivers.

Sometimes, it really is NetworkManager's fault.  If you think that's the case,
please file a bug at http://bugzilla.gnome.org and choose the NetworkManager
component.  Attaching the output of /var/log/messages or /var/log/daemon.log
(wherever your distribution directs syslog's 'daemon' facility output) is often
very helpful, and (if you can get) a working wpa_supplicant config file helps
enormously.