Bug#1041054: dracut-network: Please support systemd-networkd and network-manager as alternative to isc-dhcp-client

Benjamin Drung

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Jul 14, 2023, 10:40:05 AM7/14/23

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Package: dracut-network
Version: 059-4
Severity: normal
X-Debbugs-Cc: bdr...@debian.org

Dear Maintainer,

ISC has announced the end of life for ISC DHCP as of the end of 2022.
Kea is the recommended successor of the DHCP server. This bug report is
about replacing the DHCP client dhclient. dracut-network depends on
isc-dhcp-client.

Judging from the directories
/usr/lib/dracut/modules.d/01systemd-networkd and
/usr/lib/dracut/modules.d/35network-manager dracut probably supports
systemd-networkd and network-manager as well.

So I suggest to change the dependency on isc-dhcp-client into
"systemd | network-manager | isc-dhcp-client"

--
Benjamin Drung
Debian & Ubuntu Developer

Laszlo

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Jul 20, 2023, 9:30:05 AM7/20/23

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Hello Team,

I opened an MR to resolve this - https://salsa.debian.org/debian/dracut/-/merge_requests/23 .

As an upstream dracut maintainer, I'd like to add that:

1./ network-legacy is still likely the most tested and trusted dracut networking backend. The entire dracut upstream testing is still on network-legacy as other networking backends are not yet stable. 

2./ network-manager requires dbus in initramfs, which is known to have problems - https://github.com/dracutdevs/dracut/issues/2378

3./ Not all dracut kernel command line options are supported by all dracut networking backends - https://github.com/dracutdevs/dracut/issues/1876

Benjamin, if you have a chance to test other Dracut networking backends (e.g. systemd-networkd or perhaps even connman) on Debian and report back that would be useful both for the Debian and for the Dracut upstream communities.

Best,

Laszlo

Benjamin Drung

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Jul 31, 2023, 6:50:05 AM7/31/23

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Hi,

On Thu, 2023-07-20 at 09:20 -0400, Laszlo wrote:
> Hello Team,
>
> I opened an MR to resolve this -
> https://salsa.debian.org/debian/dracut/-/merge_requests/23 .
>
> As an upstream dracut maintainer, I'd like to add that:
>
> 1./ network-legacy is still likely the most tested and trusted dracut
> networking backend. The entire dracut upstream testing is still on
> network-legacy as other networking backends are not yet stable.
>
> 2./ network-manager requires dbus in initramfs, which is known to have
> problems - https://github.com/dracutdevs/dracut/issues/2378
>
> 3./ Not all dracut kernel command line options are supported by all
> dracut networking backends -
> https://github.com/dracutdevs/dracut/issues/1876

Thanks.

> Benjamin, if you have a chance to test other Dracut networking
> backends (e.g. systemd-networkd or perhaps even connman) on Debian and
> report back that would be useful both for the Debian and for the
> Dracut upstream communities.

I have near zero experience with dracut. I opened this bug report
because we want to replace isc-dhcp-client in Ubuntu.

I suggest that someone with experience (e.g. the Debian maintainer)
could write an autopkgtest for testing this automatically. You can get
some inspiration for it from the qemu-net autopkgtest for initramfs-
tools:
https://salsa.debian.org/kernel-team/initramfs-tools/-/merge_requests/77
This test builds a stripped down root filesystem image that checks that
the boot was successful. It builds a initramfs and boots that with qemu.