[libvirt] Update on host interface configuration

[David Lutterkort]

On Thu, 2009-02-26 at 12:40 -0500, Dan Williams wrote:
> 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.

Yes, that agrees with how I've been thinking about this: changing the
config and bringing an interface/connection up/down are different
operations.

David