Ubuntu seems to provide at least two network "toolsets" (for lack of a better term). I'm running into conflicts between these two.
- Network Manager
- Something which is more like the traditional network tools (e.g. ifconfig, 'ifup', /etc/network/interfaces
I am often running into conflicts between these different sets of tools. For example, I'm running Ubuntu Desktop at home and I'm using software like KVM/libvirt which recommends that I disable Network Manager, but disabling Network Manager causes other things to break.
What is the difference between Network Manager and the traditional network tools? Can these two suites run side-by-side or must I stick with one or the other? Is there a document which summarizes the difference between these different tools? I have been unable to find one.
(Forgive the vagueness of this question. I've searched and searched for an answer, but I have only found many vague answers which don't seem relevant to Ubuntu 10.04/Lucid, and I may not fully understand the purpose of NetworkManager. However, this seems to be a frequently asked question. If you have advice for clarifying this question, please post a comment.)
Best Answer
NetworkManager
andifconfig
are not (by default) compatible (NetworkManager
won't configure interfaces listed in/etc/network/interfaces
).NetworkManager
is a sort of settings daemon that makes sure that multiple users can edit network connections, this is very smart in a desktop environment (especially on laptops that might move around between different wireless networks). BasicallyNetworkManager
is a frontend toiproute
,dhclient
,wpa_supplicant
andppp
.ifconfig
is a general tool for configuring network interfaces, you can for example do like this:to set your IP, netmask and MAC address of
eth1
, and then down (disable/turn off) your interface.ifconfig
doesn't read any config files and does only exactly what it is told.ifup
andifdown
are helper programs that useifconfig
to configure a network interface in accordance to/etc/network/interfaces
this will make sure that if there are any up, down, pre-up, pre-down, post-up, post-down scripts that need to be run they will be.Ok, then there is
wpa_supplicant
anddhclient
.dhclient
is a DHCP client -ifup
will use this if a network interface is configured for DHCP, as willNetworkManager
.wpa_supplicant
is a tool for configuring encryption on wireless networks.Most of these tools have man pages, for instance the interfaces-file have it's own manpage that describe the format of that config file.
So that being said i would recommend that you remove (or disable)
NetworkManager
, I don't think that any thing will break from removingNetworkManager
except the gui tools for setting up network. If you want to configure wireless withoutNetworkManager
you might want to look at this.