[OpenIndiana-discuss] OI Hipster becomes unreachable over network after a certain length of uptime

[Udo Grabowski (IMK)]

On 13/04/2022 21:13, Judah Richardson wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 13, 2022 at 2:03 PM Gary Mills <gary_mills at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, Apr 13, 2022 at 08:04:40PM +0200, stes at PANDORA.BE wrote:
>>
>>> The documentation
>>>
>> http://docs.openindiana.org/handbook/systems-administration/#configuring-networking
>>> writes:
>>
>>> "While usually server and desktop installations tend to use default
>>> network configurations, laptop users can leverage nwam network
>>> configuations."
>>
>> That really means: "in an envionment where the network configuration
>> changes frequently".
>>
> Speaking as an experimental user (read: OI is not my daily driver) who
> acknowledges OI inherits a lot of internal functionality from a
> server/workstation distro (openSolaris): all of this strikes me as
> anachronistically(?) complicated for something that should by default
> expect to get an IP address lease from any DHCP server on a network to
> which it's connected.
> 
> Or, put more simply: it assumes a lot of network complexity that isn't
> there for most (home) networks.
> 
> I'm not necessarily advocating for it to change since I don't have the time
> to do it and clearly it seems to work for many people; just making an
> observation. I can't think of any other OS I've used (Android, Linux,
> Windows, (Free)BSD) for which maintaining a network connection isn't
> anything more than connecting an Ethernet cable.
 > ....

The facts are that server environments can be really involved (and
even Desktops), and NWAM isn't fit for such complications.
E.g., today I had a rather simple task: Copy a network configuration
from one wall connector to another, and our guys from the central
network messed it up... The simple task was: configure one TX wall
outlet to carry two tagged VLANs. Instead, they distributed them
untagged across two connectors. My fixed config (without NWAM)
made at least one connection visible, so that I could diagnose
and recover. NWAM would have messed that up completely as it cannot
(at least to my knowledge) cope with tagged VLANs, leaving the box
disconnected, which is not so funny when you are in home office...
We have a couple of such involved configs due to environmental/hardware
constraints which always happens if you have a larger machine park
with over 100 instances.
So you simply need all those manual knobs and switches that can be
turned to adapt to all these hassles. NWAM probably does its job
for the simple Desktop, but that isn't the right measure to decide
what a OS should provide as configuration tools. Then we could simply
drop in.routed and other seldom used stuff, since almost no one needs
that => please go away and use another OS if so... That's clearly not
the goal.
In fact, when you've worked a couple of decades in that job, you would
find out that you may at least once needed those tools and were happy
to have them.