Quote Originally Posted by Capricorny View Post
Yes, in your use situation, the case is pretty clear. But I can imagine that KK is rather reluctant to tie basic services to the graphical mode, which is why he has opted for a cheatcode off-switch instead. And when you have told networkmanager not to manage an interface, I would think the other configuration tools work or could relatively easily be made to do so.

I completely agree with respect to command line behavior.

Network-Manager is a daemon that listens to interfaces statuses and selects a configuration based on wireless SSIDs or user interaction. It is not a graphical program by itself, but interacts with graphical user interfaces for control, as well as featuring a tiny commandline interface and controls over dbus, so it is quite flexible. By default, network-manager does a lot on its own, like trying DHCP as soon as you plug in a cable into the network card.

Actually, network-manager should respect manual settings in /etc/network/interfaces, also in textmode. In fact, Knoppix contains a script that changes network-managers configuration entirely via /etc/network/interfaces for use in textmode:
"knoppix-networkmanager".

However, after changing /etc/network/interfaces manually, you need to restart network-manager in order for changes to take effect:

sudo /etc/init.d/network-manager restart

Do NOT use ifup/ifdown if network-manager is running. Network-manager will ignore the lock status of ifup/ifdown, while ifup/ifdown will ignore all settings done with network-managers own control programs.

Using static IP addresses in network-manager works fine as long as there is a physical connection, but unfortunately, network-manager does not seem to keep the set IP address when there is no carrier signal on the network cable.

If you want to use the command-line, you have the option of excluding an interface from being handled by network-manager:

sudo nmcli dev disconnect iface eth0

which makes network-manager stop listening on eth0 at all, so you can work with ifup/ifdown again if you are more used to these.

Or just suspend network-manager:

sudo /etc/init.d/network-manager stop

(which is an alternative to using the "nonetworkmanager" cheatcode in Knoppix).

Because of its user-friendly desktop integration in Gnome and KDE (and LXDE, too), most distros are using network-manager by default nowadays. For commandline experts who are used to configure everything manually via ifconfig and route, it's a little uneasy that a daemon is handling all the network stuff and will override manual settings (except in the aforementioned cases), I agree with that. So I would recommend just booting Knoppix with the "nonetworkmanager" option, or use the tricks above to revert to the non-automatic configuration behaviour.

Regards
-Klaus