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Bug 667874 - NM writes to its system configuration file (/etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf)
NM writes to its system configuration file (/etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManage...
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: NetworkManager
Classification: Platform
Component: general
git master
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: Dan Williams
NetworkManager maintainer(s)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2012-01-13 15:38 UTC by Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre
Modified: 2013-04-30 13:37 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Description Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre 2012-01-13 15:38:20 UTC 
NM tends to write stuff it's own system config file (/etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf) which complicates handling of shipping updates to these files by a distribution.

In particular, I've noticed it writing such entries:
no-auto-default=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx,

The problem with this is that from that point, the configuration file is considered to have been changed by the user, and (Debian and Ubuntu) upgrades are complicated by showing a prompt to confirm changes.

In Ubuntu, we want to start shipping dns=dnsmasq with the NetworkManager package. Doing this right now means that any user who has renamed their auto connection will get a prompt asking to verify changes and optionally see a diff. However, users shouldn't be expected to know about these changes given that they were done in background by NetworkManager.

NM should probably write the "no-auto-default" key to some other state file. Other config keys may be affected.
Comment 1 Dan Williams 2012-01-13 15:46:24 UTC 
The complication here is that no-auto-default is actually a configuration value that users can change to ensure that NM doesn't create a default wired connection for the given interface.  NM writes this value out when the user deletes the default wired connection to ensure that it's not re-created every reboot after the user has decided to kill it.  I've also heard of users updating this manually to prevent this from happening.

I suppose we could keep this information in /var/lib/ too and make a note in the manpage?  It seems odd to have this configuration data in more than one place though.  Is there no way with apt/deb to distinguish between programmatic changes and user changes?
Comment 2 Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre 2012-01-13 15:56:05 UTC 
I'll need to look more into it. I agree that keeping the same information in multiple places is probably weird.

I was thinking more of something like the seen-bssids file where the list could contain just mac addresses; but I guess that doesn't work as well for keyfiles nor really help the users make sure this kind of data is modifyable.

This is not something I'm expecting to fix now, but more as something to figure out if we can avoid in the future.
Comment 3 Dan Winship 2013-04-30 13:37:47 UTC 
oh, this was fixed a while ago in master; automatically-added no-auto-defaults are now stored in $(NMSTATEDIR)/no-auto-default.state.