NetworkManager - unmanaged devices (vif)

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

Hi,

Does anyone know a way to hide network device completely from
NetworkManager? The only way I know to prevent NetworkManager from
configuring the device is marking it as "unmanaged", but it is still
present in nm-applet - which is really confusing for many users.

I'm talking about vif interfaces - downlinks to other VMs (in default
setup to firewall vm). When the user have problem with device driver,
the real device does not appear in the menu, but the "unmanaged device"
is of course present - which can be easily confused with that missing
device. This leads to looking for the problem in totally wrong place
(how to convince NM to mange the device vs how to fix the driver).

Any ideas how to hide those devices? Most preferably by some
configuration option of course, not a patch for nm-applet/NM...
Maybe some udev property? Or some dbus call to hide the device?

--
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?