removing NetworkManager from cloud image?

[Andy Grimm]

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 2:17 PM, David Nalley <david at gnsa.us> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 2:03 PM, Matthew Miller
> <mattdm at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>> On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 01:41:31PM -0400, Andy Grimm wrote:
>>> This feels like https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=693602 all
>>> over again (the debate about whether to make "minimal" installs
>>> include NM or to make sure that the network service starts correctly
>>> when NM is absent).  I am no fan of NM, but I think the memory
>>
>> It's basically the same, but we have a different use case than a _generic_
>> minimum install. I repeatedly hear that the base Fedora cloud image should
>> contain as little as possible
>
> Where are you hearing this from? And who is saying this? Cloud
> Providers? Users with one or two instances? massive deployments
> (thousands of VMs)?

I second this question.  I've been down the "as small as possible"
road (at rPath, 5 years ago), and it's possible to go too far.  For
example, we could exclude all docs and man pages from the image.  That
would make it smaller, sure, but is it worth it?  People who want that
can build their own.

> , and this is an attempt to move in that
>> direction. I know it's not a huge amount overall, but I also don't see much
>> cost to doing it. The big changes are going to take a lot of work, so
>> there's also value in hitting the various smaller ones for a cumulative
>> improvment.
>
> At least one additional cost comes in the form of QA - we can be
> relatively certain that if NM works in a VM it will work in our cloud
> image.

+1 ... this is the argument I made about SELinux to folks at
Eucalyptus.  Sure, we could switch it to permissive mode, but we still
also have to test with it enforcing.  This is the same thing -- we'd
still need to ensure that each Fedora release works in various clouds
with NM installed, so it might as well be the default way that we do
things.

>>> [...] and since the decision as far as I'm aware is
>>> that "minimal" installs now contain NM, we should go along with that.
>>
>> Well, from the bug: "You'll still be able to install without NM via a
>> kickstart if you really must." That's what I'm proposing, not blocking NM
>> from Cloud entirely. (Which would be silly.)

The primary reason that the old-style network service is still
supported is that some key features like bonding still don't quite
work in NM, but there is work happening upstream to this end.  For
example:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=540995

>>>  Wherever NM causes a problem, it should be treated as an NM bug and
>>> fixed, not used as an excuse to deviate for the standard distro
>>> install.
>>
>> Splitting off more of the dependencies, (for example
>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=809098) would also help and be
>> progress forward for everyone. Likewise, it'd be great to see a "run once"
>> mode for NetworkManager so it doesn't need to just sit there basically doing
>> nothing in the cases where its more advanced features aren't needed:
>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=863515
>>

+1 to these ideas.  I think this is the right way to move forward.

Andy