Thoughts about VPN

[Will Stephenson]

On Friday 13 November 2009 02:30:06 Andrey Batyiev wrote:
> I was trying to understand how is better to get VPN connection settings (ip
> config, dns servers, routes etc). There are problems: KNM/solid doesn't
>  have needed infrastructure and NM doesn't provide simple way to get this
>  info (there is no org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.IP4Config node, as with
>  any non-VPN connections).
> 
> My solutions:
> * KNM/solid: introduce VPNNetworkInterface similar to other
>  NetworkInterfaces. Reasoning: in fact, each of VPN plugins creates
>  underlying network device, e.g. ppp0 for pptp, tun0 for openvpn and vpnc.

I am also encountering these problems with the notification work I did 
yesterday.  When VPN connections activate they don't cause the interface to 
change status as a physical connection does.

IPSec doesn't require a network device though, and we don't want to limit the 
Solid classes to the VPN types NM supports today.

Maybe a VPNConnection class that holds a pointer to a 
Solid::Control::NetworkInterface instance, that may be null, that has a 
similar interface to S::C::NI, excluding the things that are not relevant like 
designSpeed and capabilities.

> * NM: we can ask NM guys either to make
> org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.IP4Config node, or to catch

Yes, I think org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.VPN.Connection should have an 
Ip4Config o property (like o.f.NM.Device does) referring to the VPN connection 
IP config.

> org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.VPN.Plugin.Ip4Config signal from VPN plugin.

Don't encourage NM to add more special cases!

Will