NetworkManager 1.24

NetworkManager is a tool to configure the network on Linux offering a fully-featured set of APIs via D-Bus to enable applications to manage networking and be network-aware.

These are the release notes for the new version of NetworkManager 1.24.

What’s new in 1.24?

VRF

You can now add and manage virtual routing and forwarding interfaces.

The following is a quick example using nmcli:

$ nmcli connection add type vrf ifname vrf0 con-name vrf0 table 101 ipv4.method disabled ipv6.method disabled

Here we just created a VRF interface, to actually make use of it let’s enslave an interface to it.

$ nmcli connection add type ethernet con-name vrf.eth0 ifname eth0 master vrf0

That’s it, now all routes added to the vrf.eth0 connection will be part of the new VRF routing table.

OWE

OWE stands for Opportunistic Wireless Encryption mode and it allows you to have encrypted communications without having any pre-shared keys.
Here’s how to use it:

$ nmcli connection add type wifi ssid $SSID wifi-sec.key-mgmt owe

It also works if you just connect to the WiFi network:

$ nmcli device wifi connect $SSID
Other notable features and improvements
  • Added support for 31-bit prefixes on IPv4 point-to-point links according to RFC 3021.
  • Improved the reaction of IPv6 SLAAC to renumbering events.
  • Added command to nmcli to remove settings: nmcli connection modify $conn remove $setting.
  • backslash escape sequences are now supported for the following properties: vpn.data, vpn.secrets, bond.options, and ethernet.s390-options.
  • Added bridge options: multicast-querier, multicast-query-use-ifaddr, multicast-router, vlan-stats-enabled, vlan-protocol and group-address.
  • Added IPv6 options: ipv6.dhcp-timeout, ipv6.ra-timeout properties.
  • WWAN: NetworkManager now detects if a PIN-protected SIM card has been externally unlocked and automatically tries to activate a suitable connection on the modem.
  • OVS: added support for changing MTU of OVS interfaces.
  • Dropped dependencies for libpolkit-agent-1 and libpolkit-gobject-1.

Of course, this new release comes with a lot of bug fixes and improvements.

NEWSFILE

NetworkManager 1.24

Enjoy 🙂