[pkg-wpa-devel] network-manager broke if-down.d, lost if-pre-up.d/if-post-down.d

[Mark Hedges]

Hi.  Apologies for the mass mail, I'm writing because you
maintain Debian packages that install scripts in
/etc/network/if-*.d/.

network-manager in Squeeze has broken the behavior of
scripts in these directories.  Since it is the choice by
default in the default desktop, it seems important.

if-pre-up.d and if-post-down.d are no longer processed at
all:

 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=600167
 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=518368

if-down.d is called after the interface has already been
taken down, so scripts there no longer have access to the
network, if they needed it:

 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=600167
 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=562811

(According to ifupdown, that is what the post-down phase is
supposed to do.)

The primary engineer is Dan Williams, who works for RedHat.
It does seem suspicious to me that this change slipped by
without even a mention in the changelog.  I asked on the
list but got no response.  I wrote hime directly about the
first bug, just asking for his thoughts, and he didn't
answer.

The detailed control over phases provided by ifupdown
enables developers to create novel applications especially
for laptops and mobile devices.  I think it's also important
for security to restrict iptables before the interface comes
up.

If you'd care to chime in on the bugzilla.gnome.org bugs,
I'm sure it would help restore these features that Debian
(and Ubuntu) packages have come to depend on.

Thanks.  --mark--