[systemd-devel] Network Manager and systemd-networkd.service

[Dan Williams]

On Wed, 2014-04-16 at 08:39 +0200, Thomas Bächler wrote:
> Am 16.04.2014 06:10, schrieb Andy Johnson:
> > Hello, systemd-devel,
> > 
> > I saw this in the manpage of systemd-networkd.service (in the systemd git tree)
> > 
> > systemd-networkd.service, systemd-networkd — Network manager
> > 
> > My question is: is systemd-networkd.service a replacement for the
> > Network Manager
> 
> No. networkd is aimed at configuration file based static network setups.
> It is supposed to be suitable for early boot (initrd) and for automatic
> network setup in containers and VMs. It is unlikely to ever include
> support for wifi.
> 
> On a desktop or server with a single LAN connection, networkd may be a
> good choice. On a laptop that dynamically switches between LAN, Wifi,
> bluetooth-based tethering and networking via pidgeons, you want to use
> something like NetworkManager.
> 
> See Tom Gundersen's G+ posts on the topic, he explains the goal and
> design of networkd in great detail.

Obviously NetworkManager and networkd will be installed on the same
system at times, and we (the NetworkManager team) have spent a lot of
time in the past year or two making NetworkManager more aware of changes
made by other processes, and we expect NetworkManager to recognize and
handle these changes as part of its normal workflow even without setting
any devices to unmanaged mode.  We intend to continue enhancing that.

So the long and short of it is that nothing obsoletes NetworkManager,
and we (the NetworkManager) team expect NetworkManager to cooperate with
external tools that make changes to networking, be they networkd, manual
changes with /sbin/ip, libvirt, neutron, custom scripts, ifup/ifdown,
whatever.

Dan