[gentoo-soc] Network Configuration in Gentoo

[Zhitong He <hezhit@gmail.com>]

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Hi, I have been trying to get involved with NetworkManager's integration
with Gentoo, but encounter some problems.

1. What network configuration in Gentoo does are not what NM can do.
    Modular Networking in Gentoo is popular, however, they are not all
supported by NM. For example, bonding, bridging and vlan. In addition,
advanced configuration such as interface dependency, fall back operation,
are not supported by NM, too.

2. Configuration about Wireless Networking is not powerful enough.
    Security wireless connection is a strong point of NM, however, not the
network configuration of Gentoo. Though we can choose  wpa_supplicant module
for security connection, the configuration depends on wpa_supplicant's
configuration files which has its own syntax and not worth translation back
to NM using plugin, since NM is already working with wpa_supplicant via dbus
communication.

So, what's the benefit for Gentoo and  what I can do if choosing the
project?
Working with syntax in network configuration file like config_<interface>
and config_<essid>  is  pleasure, but is that enough? they are only little
part of Gentoo's network configuration file. The work should focus on
settings for NM, but settings in Gentoo's network configuration rely on
various tools according to different modules and the syntax is not unified.
Will mentor let me pass the final evaluation if only part of the
configuration is support?  :-)

 My conclusion is that we should do more work on improving the way to
configure network in Gentoo instead of NM integration, if we need to make it
easily supported by various network control daemon. For example, focus on
settings for variable control like /etc/make.conf instead of syntax as
wpa_supplicant_wlan0="-Dwext", put it from a single file(/etc/conf.d/net) to
a specified directory, where we can also place the vpn keys, pem files..

Sorry for my poor English, I would explain further if you could not
understand my opinion. Feedback and comments are welcome.

-- 
Zhitong He

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