14 DAY TRIAL // Development of NetworkManager, the open-source program that lets you detect network connections and configure new ones, continues for the upcoming major 1.6 release. The first two Release Candidate versions of NetworkManager 1.6 are now available for public testing, bringing a whole lot of goodies.
Among the most exciting new features implemented so far, we can mention support for managing MACsec links, which requires wpa_supplicant 2.6 or later to be installed, the ability to detect and configure Web Proxy settings through the PacRunner service, as well as support for the "ipv6.method=shared" option to fetch prefixes for the respective network interface.
Initial support for PKCS#11 tokens with 802.1x authentication has been implemented as well, along with support for systemd-resolved as local DNS forwarder backend. NetworkManager 1.6 will also split the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) into a separate package and support reading of network configurations from the /run/NetworkManager/conf.d directory, which could be used for transferring configs discovered during boot.
Most network connections will be kept alive on shutdown
Another interesting change that's coming to NetworkManager 1.6 is the ability for the software to keep most of the network connections alive during system shutdown, obvious exception making those that cannot be assumed on startup, including Wi-Fi and VPN. Furthermore, NetworkManager 1.6 is changing the meaning of the "cloned-mac-address" setting from "permanent" to "preserve."
"This changes the default value and affects existing connections during upgrade that did not explicitly configure cloned-mac-address. This has the effect that externally configured MAC addresses are preserved by default instead of setting the permanent address," explained the developers in the internal release notes.
There are numerous other new features and improvements coming soon to NetworkManager, such as the ability to use the cloned.mac-address property with Bridge and Bond devices, and support for nmtui to create and edit IP tunnel connections. When using NetworkManager 1.6, Ethernet devices will be able to use the "802-3.duplex" and "802-3.speed" properties to allow to control the overriding of the negotiated link parameters.
Now that NetworkManager 1.6 received its second Release Candidate version, it won't be long until the final version hits the streets. Until then, we invite you to download the source tarball of NetworkManager 1.6 RC2 (technical version number 1.5.92) right now from our website and compile it for your GNU/Linux distribution.