So you're interested in hacking on NetworkManager?  Here's some cool

stuff you could do...

* Use netlink API instead of ioctl based ethtool.

NetworkManager uses ethtool API to set/obtain certain settings of network

devices. This is an ioctl based API and implmented in "src/platform/nm-platform-utils.c".

Recently, kernel got a netlink API for the same functionality

(https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/networking/ethtool-netlink.html).

NetworkManager should use this API if present, and fallback to the old API

when running on older kernels. The benefit if this is that netlink provides

notifications when settings change. The ethtool command line tool

also implements this API, however it is under an incompatible license,

so better don't look and make sure not to use the code.

* Add 802-1x capability to nmtui.

Add dialogs to nmtui for 802-1x. This will be useful for ethernet (with 802-1x

port authentication), enterprise Wi-Fi and MACSec. From the GUI and dialog design,

possibly get inspired by nm-connection-editor.

* Add Azure support to nm-cloud-setup.

Currently, nm-cloud-setup only works for EC2 (and only for IPv4). Add support for Azure

cloud. See for example SUSE's cloud-netconfig which supports Azure

(https://github.com/SUSE-Enceladus/cloud-netconfig,

https://www.suse.com/c/multi-nic-cloud-netconfig-ec2-azure/). Note that cloud-netconfig

is under an incompatible license, so be careful not to reuse any code. But that would

anyway be almost impossible, because one is written in bash and the other in C.

* Improve our gitlab-ci integration.

Currently, our .gitlab-ci starts various base containers and first installs

the necessary dependencies. That takes time and consumes bandwidth, we should

instead use more suitable containers. We should instead use ci-templates from

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/freedesktop/ci-templates.

* Ethernet Network Auto-detection

There are various methods we can use to autodetect which wired network connection

to use if the user connects to more than one wired network on a frequent basis.

First, 802.1x enterprise switches broadcast frames which can be used to indicate

that the switch supports 802.1x and thus allow NetworkManager to select an

802.1x connection instead of blindly trying DHCP.  Second, NetworkManager could

listen for traffic from a list of MAC addresses.  Third, NetworkManager could

integrate 'arping' functionality to determine if a given IP address matches a

given MAC address, and thus automatically select that connection.  All these

methods can co-exist and be used in parallel.

One small caveat is that MAC addresses are trivial to spoof, so just because

NetworkManager has discovered a certain MAC address does not mean the network

is authenticated; only 802.1x security can assure that a network is the network

the user expects it to be.

In any case, a new 'anchor-addresses' property of type string-array should be

added to the NMSettingWired setting.  Each string element of this property

should be of the format "<ip>/<mac>" or simply "<mac>".  The first format with

an IP address would indicate that "arping"-type behavior should be used to

actively detect the given MAC address; obviously if the given MAC address is

used for passive discovery as well.  The second format simply lists a MAC

address to passively listen for.

One drawback of listening or probing for known MAC addresses is an increase in

latency during connections to ethernet networks.  The probing/listening delay

should be a reasonable amount of time, like 4 - 5 seconds or so, and should

only be used when a visible connection has anchor addresses.

Next a gboolean 'anchor-probing' variable should be added to the

NMDeviceEthernetPrivate structure in src/nm-device-ethernet.c.  This variable

should be set to TRUE whenever the device's carrier turns on *and* there are

visible NMConnections with anchor addresses (ie, connections which are system-

wide or where one of the allowed users of that connection is logged in).  Then

probing and listening are started, which involves opening a low-level socket

on the interface and starting the arping run or listening for MAC addresses.

A timer is also started (don't forget to cache the timer's source ID in the

NMDeviceEthernetPrivate data, and to cancel the timer whenever the device

transitions to any state other than DISCONNECTED).

If a known MAC address is discovered as a result of probing or listening, the

probe/listen socket, timeout, and data are cleaned up, and NetworkManager

would begin activation of the NMConnection that specified the found MAC address

in the 'anchor-addresses' property.  If two or more connections specify the

same MAC address, the connection with the most recent timestamp should be

preferred.

Similarly, if the probing/listening process detects 802.1x frames the device

should be marked as requiring 802.1x authentication until the carrier drops.

This would be accomplished by adding a new property to the NMDeviceEthernet

object and exporting that property through the

introspection/nm-device-ethernet.xml file.  This would allow clients like

applets to ensure that users are aware that the device will not allow

un-authenticated connections and that additional credentials are required to

successfully connect to this network.

* VPN re-connect (bgo #349151)

NM should remember whether a VPN was connected if a connection disconnects

(like Wi-Fi drops out or short carrier drop) or if the laptop goes to sleep.

Upon reconnect, if the same Connection is again active, the previously

connected VPN should be activated again as well.  Basically, don't just drop

the VPN because Wi-Fi choked for 10 seconds, but reconnect the VPN if it was

connected before the drop.

* VPN IP Methods

Some VPNs (openvpn with TAP for example) require that DHCP is run on a

pseudo-ethernet device to obtain addressing information.  Currenty, this is not

possible, but NM already has all the code for DHCP.  Thus, a new "method"

key should be defined in include/NetworkManagerVPN.h to allow for DHCP to

be performed if the VPN service daemon requests it in the IP4Config or IP6Config

signals. In nm-vpn-connection.c, upon receipt of the D-Bus Ip4Config signal

from the VPN plugin, NetworkManager would inspect the "method" property of the

ip4 config dictionary.  If that property was present and set to "auto" then

DHCP would be started using the network interface returned in the dict.  The

nm_vpn_connection_ip4_config_get() function should be split up into two

functions, one containing the existing code for static configuration, and a

second for handling DHCP kickoff.  Minimal parsing of the response should be

handled in the newly reduced nm_vpn_connection_ip4_config_get() function.

To handle DHCP, the NMVPNConnectionPrivate structure should have two members

added:

    NMDHCPManager *dhcp_manager;

    NMDHCPClient  *dhcp4_client;

which would be initialized in the new DHCP handler code split off from

nm_vpn_connection_ip4_config_get().  These new members would be disposed of in

both vpn_cleanup() and dispose(), though remember to stop any ongoing DHCP

transaction when doing so (see dhcp4_cleanup() in nm-device.c for example code).

For basic code to start the DHCP transaction, see dhcp4_start() in nm-device.c

as well.  After calling nm_dhcp_manager_start_ip4() and connecting the signals

to monitor success and failure, the VPN IP4 config handler would simply return

without changing VPN state, unless a failure occurred.

Then, when the DHCP transaction succeeds, which we'd know by checking the

DHCP client state changes in the "state-changed" signal handler we attached to

the DHCP client object returned from nm_dhcp_manager_start_ip4(), the code

would retrieve the completed NMIP4Config object from the DHCP client using the

nm_dhcp_client_get_ip4_config() function, and then proceed to execute

essentially the bottom-half of the existing nm_vpn_connection_ip4_config_get()

function to merge that config with user overrides and apply it to the VPN

tunnel interface.  Other state changes from the DHCP client might trigger a

failure of the VPN connection, just like DHCP timeouts and lease-renewal

failures do for other devices (see dhcp_state_changed() in nm-device.c).

* VPN Service Daemon Secret Requests

In addition to NM asking the service daemons whether more secrets are required,

VPN service daemons (like nm-vpnc-service, nm-openvpn-service, etc) should be

able to ask NetworkManager to provide secrets during the connection attempt. To

do this, the plugin should advertise its ability to handle out-of-band secrets

in its .service file via the key 'async-secrets=true'.  NetworkManager would

check that key and if present activate the VPN as normal, but skip the explicit

NeedSecrets calls.

Instead, a new "SecretsRequired" signal would be added to

introspection/nm-vpn-plugin.xml (and corresponding helper code added to

libnm-glib/nm-vpn-plugin.c) that would be emitted when the plugin determined

that secrets were required.  This signal would have D-Bus signature of "sas"

for the arguments [ <s:uuid>, <as:secrets> ] with the <uuid> obviously being

the connection UUID, and <secrets> being an array of strings of plugin-specific

strings the plugin requires secrets for.  This array of strings would then be

passed as the "hints" parameter in nm-vpn-connection.c when secrets are

requested from agents in a subsequent nm_settings_connection_get_secrets() call.

At this time the agent code only allows one hint per request, so we may need to

extend that to allow more than one hint.

Thus when connecting if the plugin supported async secrets NetworkManager would

still request existing secrets (without interactivity) and send them to the

VPN service daemon in the Connect D-Bus method, then wait for the service daemon

to either request secrets asynchronously via the SecretsRequired signal or to

signal successful connection via the Ip4Config signal.

The vpnc plugin would need to be reworked to open a pipe to vpnc's stdout and

stdin file descriptors to capture any authentication messages, and to match

these messages to known secrets request strings.  When receiving one of these

strings the plugin would determine which secret was being requested and then

emit the SecretsRequired signal to NetworkManager.  This would also imply that

nm-vpnc-service exectutes vpnc with the "--xauth-inter" argument to enable

challenge-response and does not use the "--non-inter" flag which suppresses that

behavior.

* WPS

wpa_supplicant has support for WPS (Wifi Protected Setup, basically Bluetooth-

like PIN codes for setting up a wifi connection) and we should add support for

this to NetworkManager too.  APs that support WPS will say so in their beacon

IEs which are contained in the "WPA" and "RSN" properties of the BSS object

exported by the supplicant, and can be processed in src/nm-wifi-ap.c's

foreach_property_cb() function.  We should add some private fields to the

NMAccessPoint object (defined in nm-wifi-ap.c) to remember whether a specific

AP supports WPS and what WPS methods it supports, and expose that over D-Bus to

GUI clients as well.

There are two common WPS setup methods: PIN and button.  For PIN, the router

either displays a random PIN on an LCD or the router's web UI, or a static PIN

is printed on the router itself.  The user enters that PIN instead of a PSK

when connecting.  For the "button" method, the router has a physical button that

when pushed, allows any client to connect for a short period of time.

We'll then need to add some properties to the NMSettingWirelessSecurity setting

for the WPS PIN code so that when the user enters it through the GUI, it can

be passed back to NM.  And we'll need to figure out some mechanism for passing

back an indication that the user pushed the button on the router for the

pushbutton method.

When connecting to a new access point that supports WPS, the GUI client would

call the AddAndActivateConnection method and wait for NM to request secrets.

NM would determine that the AP supports WPS, and request WPS secrets from the

applet.  The applet would ask the user for a PIN, or to push the button on the

AP, instead of asking for a passphrase or PSK.  When the user has entered the

PIN or pushed the button, the applet returns this information to NM, which

proceeds with the connection.

NM sends the correct wpa_supplicant config for WPS to the supplicant, and waits

for the connection to occur.  WPS can only be used the *first* time, so after a

first successful connection, NM must request the actual hexadecimal PSK from

wpa_supplicant via D-Bus, and store that PSK in the connection, clear any WPS

PIN code from the connection, and save the connection to backing storage.

Any applet GUI should also allow the user to enter the PSK instead of completing

association using WPS, since quite a few routers out there are broken, or

because the user has no physical access to the router itself, but has been given

as passphrase/PSK instead.

* Better Tablet/Mobile Behavior

There are a few components to this:

1) kernel driver and hardware capabilities: most mobile devices use periodic

background scanning to quickly determine whether a known SSID is available and

notify the connection manager to connect to it.  This typically requires special

capabilities and good powersave/sleep support from the Wi-Fi kernel driver.

There is a background scanning API in nl80211, but we need to determine how many

SSIDs each driver allows for background scanning, and based on that number, give

the driver the most recent N SSIDs.  We still need to periodically wake the

device up and do a full scan just in case the user is near a known SSID that was

not in the N top recently used networks.  This is also beneficial to normal

desktop use-cases.

wpa_supplicant doesn't currently provide an explicit interface for sending SSIDs

to the driver for background scanning, but could simply send a list using

configured networks.  However, NM currently does not send *all* configured

connections' SSIDs to the supplicant, so that's something we should do first

to optimize connection times.  To do this, NM would need to order all networks

using the NM timestamp and convert that into a supplicant priority number, which

would need to be adjusted periodically when the timestamp was updated.  This

would involve tracking each network (exposed by the supplicant as a D-Bus

object) and making sure they were added, deleted, and updated when the backing

NMConnection objects changed.  One complication is that the supplicant

requires secrets for various network types when the network is added via D-Bus,

and NetworkManager might not have those secrets yet.  We may need to modify

the supplicant allow for *all* secrets (PSKs, WEP keys, etc) to be requested

on-demand, not just EAP secrets like 802.1x passwords.  We then need to fix

up the supplicant's D-Bus interface to actually send requests for secrets out

over D-Bus (like wpa_supplicant_eap_param_needed() does for the socket-based

control interface) and to handle the resulting reply from a D-Bus client like

wpa_supplicant_ctrl_iface_ctrl_rsp() does.

With the secrets request stuff and priority handling in place, wpa_supplicant

would control network selection and roaming (based on the priorities NM gave it

of course) instead of NetworkManager itself, and hopefully lead to a faster WiFi

connection process.

2) single-device-at-a-time with overlapping connections: this is also probably

the best route to go for desktop use-cases as well.  Instead of bringing all

available connections up, only bring up the "best" connection at any given

time based on the current priority list (which is roughly Ethernet > Wi-Fi >

3G/Bluetooth).  However, to ensure seamless connectivity, when one connection

begins to degrade, the next-best connection should be started before the

current one is terminated, such that there is a small amount of overlap.

Consequently the same behavior should be used when a better connection becomes

available.  This behavior should be suspended when special connections like

Internet Connection Sharing ones are started, where clearly the priorities

are different (ie, for Mobile Hotspot 3G > WiFi).