Jeremy Katz wrote:
On Mon, 2006-12-11 at 11:59 -0500, David Cantrell wrote:
Agreed. I'd like the network configuration stage of anaconda to be
supplemented with a screen before it that asks "Would you like to enable
NetworkManager?" accompanied by a description of network manager and the
benefits and such. If the user selects yes, it skips of the network
configuration screen. If they select no, we go to the network
configuration screen. I have it on a to do list somewhere.
I'd far rather just enable NetworkManager -- let's figure out the case
of things that you can currently do with the anaconda UI that don't work
with NetworkManager, fix them, and then stop trying to pretend. Pushing
the question to the user is entirely the wrong answer.[1] There's no
way you can provide sufficient information for them to make an educated
decision here.
I'm all for that, but I don't think NetworkManager at that point yet.
Regardless of what component handles network configuration, those users
with static network setups will need to input those values somewhere.
NM will have to ask somehow, or we leave it up to anaconda (or
firstboot?). NM certainly has far more flexibility in this respect and
maybe we should just say, "ok, it's now the responsibility of NM,
however it wants to handle it." But that means networking could be
non-functional on first boot for new installations if the users have
static network configurations.
I hate asking for network configuration information because it's too
confusing to new users and it's pointless for experienced users since
they bypass it anyway.
At any rate, this is a discussion that should moves towards the NM
people as well as anaconda people.
[1] We'll still want to keep most of the configuration via kickstart as
that's somewhat important. And it's possible that we also keep the
screen around if you're building a non-NetworkManager-enabled
(legacy :-) distribution.
Of course, we wouldn't want to _remove_ code. :)
--
David Cantrell
Red Hat / Westford, MA
