Re: [Whonix-devel] Development Discussion: Should Network Manager get installed by default?

[adrelanos <adr...@ri...>]

Vladimir Arseniev:
> On 04/01/2013 04:05 AM, adr...@ri... wrote:
>> [https://sourceforge.net/p/whonix/wiki/Dev_NetworkManager/](https://sourceforge.net/p/whonix/wiki/Dev_NetworkManager/)
>>
>> URL: http://sourceforge.net/p/whonix/featureblog/2013/04/development-discussion-should-network-manager-get-installed-by-default/
> 
> It's my impression that network manager (in Ubuntu etc, at least) may
> alter various networking settings in order to maintain connectivity.

Yes, but not if they are configured with ifupdown in
/etc/network/interfaces. According to 13.04 man page
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/en/man5/NetworkManager.conf.5.html
(ifupdown plugin) it's still not planed.

I believe you mean, that NM can create, manage etc. new interfaces, but
they won't write into /etc/network/interfaces and won't involve
ifupdown, it uses it's own configuration files.

> I've used it with network-manager-openvpn as VPN client, and it's very
> intuitive. But I'm not sure that I'd trust it managing Whonix's internal
> network interface.

Well, in Whonix-Workstation case in worst case it leaks through Tor.

Just expanded that page.

Quote https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=689339#c4

> "*Please also understand that currently networkmanager is not a
security tool at
all. VPN plugins are regarded as connectivity plugins, not security
plugins.*"

Missing auto-reconnect feature:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=349151

So perhaps using NM to set up VPNs for security isn't a good idea.

Doesn't look like it has a fail closed mechanism:
https://sourceforge.net/p/whonix/wiki/VPN/#fail-closed-mechanism