Why does one interface interfere with another?

Ken D'Ambrosio ken at jots.org
Mon Jun 21 07:20:18 EDT 2010


On Sun, June 20, 2010 10:10 pm, Greg Rundlett (freephile) wrote:

> http://live.gnome.org/NetworkManager/SystemSettings touches on this
> problem apparently by saying that I could set network-manager to ignore
> anything defined in /etc/network/interfaces.  But, I don't want it
> ignored, I just want it to work well :-)

Grrrr.  You're touching on something that irks the heck out of me --
though I haven't experienced exactly what you're discussing.  For me, if
anything, it's the opposite: I hate the fact that the GUI works like this:

Networking -> Wireless

If "Networking" is enabled, then, by definition, NetworkManager feels it
manages your physical Ethernet interface.  And, only then can you enable
WiFi.  Yes, there are no doubt ways to work around this via config files,
etc., but it's insanely annoying when (say) trying to set up a quickie
testbed using your WiFi connection as your data conduit to turn your
computer into a router/NAT/whatever for something hanging off your
Ethernet.  Instead of Wireless being a subset of Networking, why couldn't
it work the way Mobile Broadband does -- entirely independently?  It's
irksome having your ifconfig statements get zapped by the dhcp client
daemon you forget is even running...

After typing all of the above, it occurs to me that your problem sounds
suspiciously like a subnet mask issue, perhaps?  What IP addresses and
subnet masks are you using?  Are there, perhaps, two default gateways,
which won't work well shy of policy-based routing or the presence of a
routing protocol?  The contents of "ifconfig" and "netstat -rn" would
help.

-Ken


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