[gentoo-dev] rfc: netplugd and ifplugd support in OpenRc

[gentoo-dev] rfc: netplugd and ifplugd support in OpenRc

[William Hubbs]

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All,

I have a regression in OpenRc wrt netplugd [1].

In researching this program, I have found that it and ifplugd, which is
the alternative, have been unmaintained for years. Also Debian has
declared netplugd to be obsolete in favor of ifplugd.

Does anyone have any thoughts about whether we should keep OpenRC
support for one or both of these?

Thanks,

William

[1] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=427088

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Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: netplugd and ifplugd support in OpenRc

[David Leverton]

On 10 September 2012 15:48, William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
> All,
>
> I have a regression in OpenRc wrt netplugd [1].
>
> In researching this program, I have found that it and ifplugd, which is
> the alternative, have been unmaintained for years. Also Debian has
> declared netplugd to be obsolete in favor of ifplugd.

The page referenced on the bug that says so appears to be talking
about a different package than the one we have in the tree - they have
different authors stated, and also, for the one we have the package is
called netplug, with the executable called netplugd, whereas for the
one declared obsolete the package itself is called netplugd.

> Does anyone have any thoughts about whether we should keep OpenRC
> support for one or both of these?

There are a few options for this functionality (that I'm aware of):
1) netplug: never used it so no particular comments.
2) ifplugd: what I'm using now.  I can't remember if there's a
particularly good reason why I chose it, but I suspect it might have
been for the audio feedback it provides when it detects a connection
or disconnection.  This probably isn't compelling enough by itself to
keep the package if we'd otherwise want to remove it, but it is quite
nice.
3) wpa_supplicant: supposed to be able to do this even for wired
interfaces, but I just did some experimenting and it seems broken - it
thinks the cable is plugged in even when it isn't.
4) dhcpcd: not sure when it was introduced, but current dhcpcd can
detect when the link goes up and down, and request/renew its lease
when it comes up.  The only wrinkle that I can see here is that, if no
ifplugd/netplug/wpa_supplicant is configured, OpenRC waits for it to
receive a lease when starting the interface, rather than allowing it
to background itself.

So for dhcpcd, it might be enough to just make OpenRC aware that it
doesn't need to wait for a lease when starting the interface.  Keeping
at least one of the other options working would still be required for
other DHCP clients if they don't have similar functionality, or
non-DHCP situations where it's necessary to do some sort of
reconfiguration when the network is (dis)connected (such as OpenRC's
arping module), assuming anyone cares about those of course.

>
> Thanks,
>
> William
>
> [1] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=427088

Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: netplugd and ifplugd support in OpenRc

[Ian Stakenvicius]

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On 10/09/12 04:05 PM, David Leverton wrote:
> 4) dhcpcd: not sure when it was introduced, but current dhcpcd can 
> detect when the link goes up and down, and request/renew its lease 
> when it comes up.  The only wrinkle that I can see here is that, if
> no ifplugd/netplug/wpa_supplicant is configured, OpenRC waits for
> it to receive a lease when starting the interface, rather than
> allowing it to background itself.
> 
> So for dhcpcd, it might be enough to just make OpenRC aware that
> it doesn't need to wait for a lease when starting the interface.

According to bug 253925 , this would only work for certain hardware
(ie, those that support the IFF_RUNNING method); ifplugd suppots three
methods (IFF_RUNNING, ethtool-style, mii-style), and netplug -seems-
to do it by connecting at the netlink level to the interface and just
listening for traffic (as far as I can tell).  So for link detection,
both ifplugd and netplug would be better than attempting to just use
dhcpcd, imo (not to mention the non-dhcp-based configs)..

(plus, since this is all for oldnet only, i would expect dhcpcd would
be a bit of an issue to integrate so that it would be able to move
net.* from inactive to started state and then exclude it from being
run a second time to configure the now-up iface..)


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Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: netplugd and ifplugd support in OpenRc

[Olivier Crête]

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On Mon, 2012-09-10 at 09:48 -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
> In researching this program, I have found that it and ifplugd, which is
> the alternative, have been unmaintained for years. Also Debian has
> declared netplugd to be obsolete in favor of ifplugd.
> 
> Does anyone have any thoughts about whether we should keep OpenRC
> support for one or both of these?

The ifplugd author recommends you use NetworkManager for dynamic
networking scenarios.

-- 
Olivier Crête
tester@gentoo.org
Gentoo Developer

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Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: netplugd and ifplugd support in OpenRc

[William Hubbs]

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On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 04:26:10PM -0400, Olivier Crête wrote:
> On Mon, 2012-09-10 at 09:48 -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
> > In researching this program, I have found that it and ifplugd, which is
> > the alternative, have been unmaintained for years. Also Debian has
> > declared netplugd to be obsolete in favor of ifplugd.
> > 
> > Does anyone have any thoughts about whether we should keep OpenRC
> > support for one or both of these?
> 
> The ifplugd author recommends you use NetworkManager for dynamic
> networking scenarios.

NM seems bloated though unless you are using a desktop environment. It
wants to install 29 dependencies on my box.

Williiam


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Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: netplugd and ifplugd support in OpenRc

[Luca Barbato]

On 9/10/12 11:05 PM, William Hubbs wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 04:26:10PM -0400, Olivier Crête wrote:
>> On Mon, 2012-09-10 at 09:48 -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
>>> In researching this program, I have found that it and ifplugd, which is
>>> the alternative, have been unmaintained for years. Also Debian has
>>> declared netplugd to be obsolete in favor of ifplugd.
>>>
>>> Does anyone have any thoughts about whether we should keep OpenRC
>>> support for one or both of these?
>>
>> The ifplugd author recommends you use NetworkManager for dynamic
>> networking scenarios.
>
> NM seems bloated though unless you are using a desktop environment. It
> wants to install 29 dependencies on my box.

NM and connman are quite a bit overkill indeed.

lu

Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: netplugd and ifplugd support in OpenRc

[Olivier Crête]

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On Tue, 2012-09-11 at 20:01 +0200, Luca Barbato wrote:
> On 9/10/12 11:05 PM, William Hubbs wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 04:26:10PM -0400, Olivier Crête wrote:
> >> On Mon, 2012-09-10 at 09:48 -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
> >>> In researching this program, I have found that it and ifplugd, which is
> >>> the alternative, have been unmaintained for years. Also Debian has
> >>> declared netplugd to be obsolete in favor of ifplugd.
> >>>
> >>> Does anyone have any thoughts about whether we should keep OpenRC
> >>> support for one or both of these?
> >>
> >> The ifplugd author recommends you use NetworkManager for dynamic
> >> networking scenarios.
> >
> > NM seems bloated though unless you are using a desktop environment. It
> > wants to install 29 dependencies on my box.
> 
> NM and connman are quite a bit overkill indeed.

If you're on a server, you probably want a static configuration anyway,
not something dynamic.

-- 
Olivier Crête
tester@gentoo.org
Gentoo Developer

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Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: netplugd and ifplugd support in OpenRc

[William Hubbs]

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On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 02:43:08PM -0400, Olivier Crête wrote:
> On Tue, 2012-09-11 at 20:01 +0200, Luca Barbato wrote:
> > On 9/10/12 11:05 PM, William Hubbs wrote:
> > > On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 04:26:10PM -0400, Olivier Crête wrote:
> > >> On Mon, 2012-09-10 at 09:48 -0500, William Hubbs wrote:
> > >>> In researching this program, I have found that it and ifplugd, which is
> > >>> the alternative, have been unmaintained for years. Also Debian has
> > >>> declared netplugd to be obsolete in favor of ifplugd.
> > >>>
> > >>> Does anyone have any thoughts about whether we should keep OpenRC
> > >>> support for one or both of these?
> > >>
> > >> The ifplugd author recommends you use NetworkManager for dynamic
> > >> networking scenarios.
> > >
> > > NM seems bloated though unless you are using a desktop environment. It
> > > wants to install 29 dependencies on my box.
> > 
> > NM and connman are quite a bit overkill indeed.
> 
> If you're on a server, you probably want a static configuration anyway,
> not something dynamic.

I can agree that a server would probably want a static configuration,
but all work stations do not use gnome, kde, etc.

William


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Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: netplugd and ifplugd support in OpenRc

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 5:01 PM, William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> I can agree that a server would probably want a static configuration,
> but all work stations do not use gnome, kde, etc.
>

Most do not run unix, but at work I can't think of any servers that
are using static configurations.  They might be assigned static IPs,
but they'll use DHCP just the same.

I deploy my network at home in the same way - most of my standing PCs
have DNS and static IP assignments, but they still use DHCP.  This way
I can still utilize PXE for backups/etc, and adjust things at any time
fairly easily.

Rich

Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: netplugd and ifplugd support in OpenRc

[Ian Stakenvicius]

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On 11/09/12 06:23 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 5:01 PM, William Hubbs
> <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
>> 
>> I can agree that a server would probably want a static
>> configuration, but all work stations do not use gnome, kde, etc.
>> 
> 
> Most do not run unix, but at work I can't think of any servers
> that are using static configurations.  They might be assigned
> static IPs, but they'll use DHCP just the same.
> 
> I deploy my network at home in the same way - most of my standing
> PCs have DNS and static IP assignments, but they still use DHCP.
> This way I can still utilize PXE for backups/etc, and adjust things
> at any time fairly easily.
> 
> Rich
> 

Some of my servers have a back-end nic that has static config defined,
and i use netplug or ifplugd for that to bring the iface up and down
based on link -- link detection != auto-configuration, imo.

Suffice to say, networkmanager is not a reasonable means to determine
link state for oldnet.  Newnet, well, all of that gets handled outside
of openrc's config anyhow so...

But this is getting a little beyond the original point of the thread.. :)


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Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: netplugd and ifplugd support in OpenRc

[Pacho Ramos]

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El mié, 12-09-2012 a las 08:44 -0400, Ian Stakenvicius escribió:
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> 
> On 11/09/12 06:23 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 5:01 PM, William Hubbs
> > <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >> 
> >> I can agree that a server would probably want a static
> >> configuration, but all work stations do not use gnome, kde, etc.
> >> 
> > 
> > Most do not run unix, but at work I can't think of any servers
> > that are using static configurations.  They might be assigned
> > static IPs, but they'll use DHCP just the same.
> > 
> > I deploy my network at home in the same way - most of my standing
> > PCs have DNS and static IP assignments, but they still use DHCP.
> > This way I can still utilize PXE for backups/etc, and adjust things
> > at any time fairly easily.
> > 
> > Rich
> > 
> 
> Some of my servers have a back-end nic that has static config defined,
> and i use netplug or ifplugd for that to bring the iface up and down
> based on link -- link detection != auto-configuration, imo.
> 
> Suffice to say, networkmanager is not a reasonable means to determine
> link state for oldnet.  Newnet, well, all of that gets handled outside
> of openrc's config anyhow so...
> 
> But this is getting a little beyond the original point of the thread.. :)
> 
> 
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> 

Also my father has two machines in his job with static config and
ifplugd to detect link up/down. I also remember to migrate years ago
from netplugd to ifplugd for some reason I can't remember now, probably
ifplugd worked better :/

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Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: netplugd and ifplugd support in OpenRc

[Christopher Head]

On Mon, 10 Sep 2012 09:48:32 -0500
William Hubbs <williamh@gentoo.org> wrote:

> Does anyone have any thoughts about whether we should keep OpenRC
> support for one or both of these?

As a user… yes? I use a laptop, so I don’t much care which one is
maintained but I’d be quite annoyed if both went away (unless there’s
some other dæmon that does the same job that I’ve never heard of).

Side note… we’re talking about a pretty tiny program here. Is “upstream
unmaintained” actually really a big deal? I mean, if ifplugd has worked
without bugs for the last seven years then it doesn’t really matter
that it’s unmaintained, does it? All the bugs on ifplugd in BGO appear
to be mostly a pile of stuff related to the scripts around it,
plus #214842 which appears to have been the kernel’s fault and #171415
which was a minor QA issue.

Chris

Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: netplugd and ifplugd support in OpenRc

[William Hubbs]

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On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 02:47:48PM -0700, Christopher Head wrote:
> As a user… yes? I use a laptop, so I don’t much care which one is
> maintained but I’d be quite annoyed if both went away (unless there’s
> some other dæmon that does the same job that I’ve never heard of).

I am thinking that we will probably stop supporting netplugd if we stop
supporting one. ifplugd seems to have much more functionality.

William


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