[libvirt] Update on host interface configuration

[Dan Williams]

On Fri, 2009-02-13 at 09:12 +0000, Mark McLoughlin wrote:
> Hi David,
> 
> Nice work ...
> 
> A thought as I update this Fedora feature page[1], given that the goal
> of the feature could be described as fixing things so that the "shared
> physical device" section of libvirt's Networking wiki page[2] isn't so
> nasty and 'orrible.
> 
> Aside from just writing out the interface configuration, will we also
> handle the case where NetworkManager is disabled/unavailable and
> manually bring up the interface with initscripts and update iptables?
> 
> Also, will NetworkManager automatically notice the configuration
> changing on disk and apply the configuration? Will we be able to detect
> what configurations NetworkManager can handle?

NM currently doesn't re-configure the connection on-the-fly when the
backing store (ie, ifcfg or gconf) changes, but the changes will get
applied the next time the connection is activated.  The user (or some
other program) can certainly re-activate the connection after writing
out the bits to get the new settings applied.

nm-system-settings would notice the changes via inotify, and read in the
new settings.  Then, when the ActivateConnection method was called for
that specific connection, NM would re-activate it and apply the new
settings.

Dan