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Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Committing to Netplan for Network Configuration

phoronix.com

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Re: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Committing to Netplan for Network Configuration

#41

Post by Izkata »

Thaxll wrote: post #19
amluto wrote: post #12

Hopefully netplan sucks less by then? Seriously, current versions are barely usable, and I don’t think I’m doing anything particularly hard. Want to verify your config before committing to it? Nope. Want to delete a vlan? Not happening without bypassing netplan. Want to bring up a vlan on an interface with a long name (which is the default on a fresh Ubuntu install with a NIC in a PCIe slot)? Netplan will accept the…

Good luck configuring wifi without netplan. Netplan is ok.

In my new laptop setup script:

  nmcli device wifi connect "$WIFI_NETWORK" password "$WIFI_PASSWORD" name "$WIFI_NETWORK"

Re: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Committing to Netplan for Network Configuration

#42

Post by DannyBee »

candiddevmike wrote: post #26
Faaak wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

netplan can actually use systemd-networkd as a backend. It will just generate the unit files, and let systemd do the job.

What's the benefit over writing netplan vs networks unit files?

So that if you like to randomly switch your underlying network management tools, you can have something take what you have and generate semi-working configurations with hard to track down bugs.

Re: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Committing to Netplan for Network Configuration

#43

Post by jacquesm »

cvccvroomvroom wrote: post #40
jacquesm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What problem is Ubuntu trying to solve? They're trying for lock-in and failing. Linux networking has been a solved problem since just about forever, and all this instability will do is cause people to abandon Ubuntu in favor of something less fickle.

It would be more useful for the various major distros to pitch in for easy, simple, congruent CLI, UI, declarative, and API configuration management for common advanced configuration. Creating artificial lock-in that doesn't work is a double-barrel footgun blast. The Ubuntu people are like the SystemD people: they just want to reinvent things from scratch and shove it down everyone's throats without any consideration…

Lock-in is the anti-thesis of open source, the two should simply never be seen together.

Re: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Committing to Netplan for Network Configuration

#44

Post by Avamander »

goalieca wrote: post #24
amluto wrote: post #12

Hopefully netplan sucks less by then? Seriously, current versions are barely usable, and I don’t think I’m doing anything particularly hard. Want to verify your config before committing to it? Nope. Want to delete a vlan? Not happening without bypassing netplan. Want to bring up a vlan on an interface with a long name (which is the default on a fresh Ubuntu install with a NIC in a PCIe slot)? Netplan will accept the…

Netplan has oversimplified things to cater only to the simplest of topologies. The schema seems unable to capture the richness and modularity of actual networking technologies.

I've achieved more reliable and reproducible complex setups with netplan than any hodgepodge of ifupdown scripts has ever done for me. Which topologies does it not work for?

Re: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Committing to Netplan for Network Configuration

#45

Post by averageRoyalty »

Thaxll wrote: post #19
amluto wrote: post #12

Hopefully netplan sucks less by then? Seriously, current versions are barely usable, and I don’t think I’m doing anything particularly hard. Want to verify your config before committing to it? Nope. Want to delete a vlan? Not happening without bypassing netplan. Want to bring up a vlan on an interface with a long name (which is the default on a fresh Ubuntu install with a NIC in a PCIe slot)? Netplan will accept the…

Good luck configuring wifi without netplan. Netplan is ok.

What's wrong with wpa_supplicant.conf and ifup?

Re: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Committing to Netplan for Network Configuration

#46

Post by amluto »

nik736 wrote: post #20
amluto wrote: post #12

Hopefully netplan sucks less by then? Seriously, current versions are barely usable, and I don’t think I’m doing anything particularly hard. Want to verify your config before committing to it? Nope. Want to delete a vlan? Not happening without bypassing netplan. Want to bring up a vlan on an interface with a long name (which is the default on a fresh Ubuntu install with a NIC in a PCIe slot)? Netplan will accept the…

You can verify your config with netplan-try. This works fairly well for me with the timeout feature. Additionally you could write a bash script that basically replaces the netplan config to the old state when the machine is no longer able to ping (or similar). There is a -state parameter for netplan apply which allows deleting VLANs, which has worked for me every time so far. What's the exact issue? I never ran into…

Huh, nifty, sort of.

But I think this whole model is wrong. For as long as I'm aware, every serious network config system (at least Cisco IOS and everything that came after) has it right: there is a live configuration and a saved configuration. You can edit the live configuration, and you can commit to the saved configuration.

So with netplan try, you edit the configuration, hope you don't crash or otherwise reboot, run netplan try, and hope it succeeds in rolling back on failure. That's a lot of hoping. With old IOS, you would just not do 'write memory' until you get the configuration right.

Similarly, netplan apply -state relies on the user to do some horrible manual shuffling of configuration. An IOS-like solution would make this automatic.

In the context of netplan, this could be quite straightforward. Instead of just /etc/netplan, there would be:

/etc/netplan: The configuration to be loaded at boot.

/var/run/netplan-live: The configuration that was most recently applied. NOTHING EXCEPT THE NETPLAN TOOLING EDITS THIS.

/tmp/whatever (or any other path): configuration that the administrator wants to test.

To use it, the admin could stage their configuration anywhere they want and netplan apply it. Then netplan commit would commit the running configuration to /etc/netplan. -state is automatic: it's in /var/run/netplan-live.

re: the last issue, one of my servers has a NIC with a name like eno12345np1. On that physical link is a vlan with tag 1234. This gives a name like "eno12345np1.1234". That plus the trailing NULL is 17 bytes, which is too long. Now this isn't strictly netplan's fault (although eno12345np1 really is excessive IMO), but the fact that netplan can't intelligently handle this or at least notice when I do netplan apply is fairly sad.

Re: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Committing to Netplan for Network Configuration

#48

Post by rickydroll »

cozzyd wrote: post #6

Let's see how many releases before they give up and go with the Fedora/EL solution.

I like the chaos of the Fedora networking tools because they let me charge more billable hours as I untangle what the client set up for themselves.

In all seriousness, once you learn Netplan, you get accustomed to 1 config file for all networking needs. I also prefer UFW to iptables. Simple and handles most day-to-day use cases.

Re: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Committing to Netplan for Network Configuration

#49

Post by rickydroll »

polski-g wrote: post #5

Ubuntu continuing to try to push their snowflakes. nmcli/nmtui works acceptably well. ifupdown-ng works great. What problem is Ubuntu trying to solve?

What they have done is taken the chaos of networking scattered across 1/2 dozen (or more) configuration files and commands and centralizes so the chaos is in one place. They've succeeded in simplifying some parts and I have faith they will make network configuration much simpler in the future.

You only think ifupdown-ng, nmcli/nmtui work well because you don't remember how hard it was to learn and developed scar tissue from using them. To my scar tissue, Debian/Ubuntu is well organized and tools like netplan clicked very fast and make network configuration much easier.

Re: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Committing to Netplan for Network Configuration

#50

Post by Spivak »

cozzyd wrote: post #6

Let's see how many releases before they give up and go with the Fedora/EL solution.

The thing I can't understand is that netplan is just a bunch of janky C that is almost entirely parsing logic and the thinnest wrapper humanly possible over systemd-networkd/networkmanager that does all the real work. And the abstraction leaks for anything but the simplest cases so your files are targeting a specific backend anyway.

systemd-networkd already gives you simple declarative INI networking files and a dbus interface. I can't find any value-add over just using its backends directly.

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