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The NetworkManager 1.44 open-source network management utility used by numerous GNU/Linux distributions by default has been released today as a major update bringing several new features and improvements.
Highlights of the NetworkManager 1.44 release include a new “link” setting that holds properties related to the kernel link, such as tx-queue-length, gso-max-size, gso-max-segments, and gro-max-size, support for sending a DHCPv6 prefix delegation hint through the ipv6.dhcp-pd-hint connection property, and new bond options including arp_missed_max, lacp_active, and ns_ip6_target.
Also new is a [keyfile].rename option in NetworkManager.conf to allow you to force rename profiles on disk when their name changes, the initial-eps-bearer-configure and initial-eps-bearer-apn properties in the GSM settings, as well as a version-id argument in the Update2() D-Bus call to protect against concurrent modifications of profiles.
NetworkManager 1.44 changes the behavior of the connection.stable-id=default${CONNECTION} setting to be identical to the built-in default value when the stable-id isn’t set, makes use of the TLD as the default search domain instead of the full hostname when configuring hostnames in non-public TLD, and always applies DNS options from the [global-dns] configuration section.
The NetworkManager daemon has been updated as well in this release to acquire the D-Bus name only after populating the D-Bus tree, a change that may add a delay during startup. However, the devs said that it is required to avoid race conditions with other services depending on NetworkManager.
Another interesting change in NetworkManager 1.44 is the deprecation of the ifcfg-rh plugin and the implementation of a new main.migrate-ifcfg-rh configuration option to automatically migrate existing ifcfg-rh connections to the keyfile format. However, migration is disabled by default so you’ll have to enable it via --with-config-migrate-ifcfg-rh-default=yes at build time.
Among other changes, NetworkManager 1.44 uses netlink to set VLAN filtering options on bridges instead of sysfs, adds support for IMDSv2 on Amazon EC2 in nm-cloud-setup, adds the ability to enable or disable Wi-Fi and WWAN radios via the nmtui text-mode tool, honors the ignore-carrier=no option for bond/bridge/team devices, and adds version mismatch warnings when running the nmcli commands.
Last but not least, NetworkManager no longer uses tentative IPv6 addresses to resolve the system’s hostname via DNS and it now tracks the number of auto-connect retries left for each device and connection rather than tracking only per connection, which could lead to unexpected behaviors for multiconnect profiles.
NetworkManager 1.44 is available for download as a source tarball from here. If compiling software from sources isn’t your cup of tea, you’ll have to wait for the new version to arrive in the stable software repositories of your GNU/Linux distribution to update your installation.
Last updated 9 months ago
