Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Committing Fully To Netplan For Network Configuration

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Committing Fully To Netplan For Network Configuration

The Canonical-developed Netplan has served for Linux network configuration on Ubuntu Server and Cloud versions for years. With the recent Ubuntu 23.10 release, Netplan is now being used by default on the desktop. Canonical is committing to fully leveraging Netplan for network configuration with the upcoming Ubuntu 24.04 LTS release and in turn also marking the Netplan 1.0 release...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Ubuntu-24.04-LTS-Fully-Netplan

[zexelon]

All things considered I personally really like the way netplan works! Yaml is a bit of an odd config file format structurally but as a whole netplan works really well.

Systemd-resolv though can burn in a lake of fire! It is hell to get it to not screw with resolv.conf and work with custome nameservers!

[stormcrow]

All things considered I personally really like the way netplan works! Yaml is a bit of an odd config file format structurally but as a whole netplan works really well.

Systemd-resolv though can burn in a lake of fire! It is hell to get it to not screw with resolv.conf and work with custome nameservers!

<rant>YAML is a pig and needs to go away. The worst of all worlds for config files. The only thing worse than YAML based configs is the Windows registry hive. </rant> (no I don't intend to elaborate, it's my opinion and no discussion will change it)

That said, it's long past time to have alternatives to Network Config. But all of this is really just lipstick on a pig trying to plaster over 40 years of Unix-style network configuration files with GUIs that never seem to make it past the 80-90% barrier to be useful beyond simple configurations.

[lu_tze]

Systemd-resolv though can burn in a lake of fire! It is hell to get it to not screw with resolv.conf and work with custome nameservers!

Another case of not knowing what you are doing? systemd-resolv works finely, can do per-interface DNS zones, and those zones can be on-demand or per-zone upstream resolvers, which no other linux resolver can do. Linux has finally a reasonable resolver!

[zexelon]

<rant>YAML is a pig and needs to go away. The worst of all worlds for config files. The only thing worse than YAML based configs is the Windows registry hive. </rant> (no I don't intend to elaborate, it's my opinion and no discussion will change it)

That said, it's long past time to have alternatives to Network Config. But all of this is really just lipstick on a pig trying to plaster over 40 years of Unix-style network configuration files with GUIs that never seem to make it past the 80-90% barrier to be useful beyond simple configurations.

Yeah... windows registry... I am sure it was someones brilliant idea somewhere... but its brutal!

[ssokolow]

<rant>YAML is a pig and needs to go away. The worst of all worlds for config files. The only thing worse than YAML based configs is the Windows registry hive. </rant> (no I don't intend to elaborate, it's my opinion and no discussion will change it)

That said, it's long past time to have alternatives to Network Config. But all of this is really just lipstick on a pig trying to plaster over 40 years of Unix-style network configuration files with GUIs that never seem to make it past the 80-90% barrier to be useful beyond simple configurations.

Just point people at YAML: probably not so great after all and that'll do fine.

[ssokolow]

Yeah... windows registry... I am sure it was someones brilliant idea somewhere... but its brutal!

You probably don't know the half of it. Give Why the Windows Registry sucks … technically a read.

(If you must have a TL;DR:, it's "Don't let non-filesystem-developers reinvent the concept of a filesystem when the problem would be best served by a database... which they also clearly lack the expertise to implement well".)

[cj.wijtmans]

Another case of not knowing what you are doing? systemd-resolv works finely, can do per-interface DNS zones, and those zones can be on-demand or per-zone upstream resolvers, which no other linux resolver can do. Linux has finally a reasonable resolver!

Its pretty neat, too bad its married to systemd and cant be used outside of it. Vendor locking sucks.

[pong]

Maybe I've been hiding under a rock and missed it but I'm still confused thinking *surely* there has to be a nice GUI or even straightforward TUI / CLI for setting up LINUX/UNIX networking.

By that I don't just mean the basic consumer "WAN, LAN, that's all" stuff but also having a multi-homed host over ethernet NIC / WIFI on different isolated LANs, using VLANs on any interface, SDN, network plumbing for containers / cgroups / VMs / bridges / tun / tap / VPN / macvtap / nftables / iptables / whatever else, maybe some ipsec over the top, setting up iproute2 traffic control / routes, etc.
I mean my own home configurations aren't remotely what I'd call complex but pretty basic stuff like having one's containers talk to each other or not as desired, exposing some ports / routing to some VMs / containers for SSH, NFS, RDP, VNC, setting up host general firewall rules that doesn't break the containers, choosing how IP-forwarding is used or not on the host, etc. etc.

I remember hearing about all this lovely SDN / network virtualization stuff coming into LINUX / BSD / solaris etc. and then when I went to use a bit of it here and there it'd be a dive through a kilometer deep labyrinth of gopher holes digging into iproute2, nftables, iptables, brctl, ebtables, ip, ifconfig, route, tun/tap, ipsec, etc.

WTF? Sure there needs to be some fully capable UNIX style CLIs with impenetrable 200 page long "manpages" for programmatic scripting and stuff but just for
ordinary every day use something with a bunch of check boxes maybe some graphical "visio / dia like" diagram of the virtual / physical network with different netmasks, addresses, filtering rules hanging off that, etc. would be lovely and sufficient for almost all ordinary uses.

I assumed I was just missing some tools but then hearing about netplan, nmcli, etc. I start to think "gee maybe there really IS no good SDN / networking configuration tool".

Don't the data center / cisco / whatever SDN / router / firewall types have any decent GUI / TUI tools for plumbing this stuff (the dozen or so different routing / firewall / VLAN / SDN / virtual interface / virtual bridge / switch / NAT / route / address assignment / netmask management / maybe DHCP service provisioning / ...) tools and configurations one needs to set up a few interconnected hosts / servers / VMs / containers / LANs even just on a very "home" scale (e.g. WAN, DMZ, gateway, WLAN, internal / isolated other WLAN, LAN only servers / services, untrusted IoT stuff, ...)?

<rant>YAML is a pig and needs to go away. The worst of all worlds for config files. The only thing worse than YAML based configs is the Windows registry hive. </rant> (no I don't intend to elaborate, it's my opinion and no discussion will change it)

That said, it's long past time to have alternatives to Network Config. But all of this is really just lipstick on a pig trying to plaster over 40 years of Unix-style network configuration files with GUIs that never seem to make it past the 80-90% barrier to be useful beyond simple configurations.

[kylew77]

I miss simple text configs like those found in Cent 7/ RHEL 7. Just go to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg and edit a file and off you go.