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<div class="chapter">
<div class="titlepage"><div><div><h1 class="title">
<a name="ref-overview"></a>Overview</h1></div></div></div>
<div class="toc"><dl class="toc">
<dt><span class="section"><a href="ref-overview.html#intro">Introduction to libnm</a></span></dt>
<dt><span class="section"><a href="usage.html">Using libnm</a></span></dt>
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<div class="section">
<div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both">
<a name="intro"></a>Introduction to libnm</h2></div></div></div>
<p>
libnm is a client library for NetworkManager, the standard Linux network
management service. NetworkManager supports a wide variety of network
configuration scenarios, hardware devices and protocol families. Most of
the functionality is exposed on a
<a class="ulink" href="https://developer.gnome.org/NetworkManager/stable/spec.html" target="_top">D-Bus API</a>,
allowing other tools to use the functionality provided by NetworkManager.
</p>
<p>
libnm provides C language bindings for functionality provided by
NetworkManager, optionally useful from other language runtimes as well.
</p>
<p>
libnm maps fairly closely to the actual D-Bus API that NetworkManager
provides, wrapping the remote D-Bus objects as native GObjects,
mapping D-Bus signals and properties to GObject signals and properties,
and providing helpful accessor and utility functions. However, unlike
the old libnm-util/libnm-glib API, the mapping to the D-Bus API is not
exact, and various inconveniences and historical anomalies of the D-Bus
API are papered over.
</p>
<p>
The following is a rough overview of the libnm object structure and
how to use the various parts of it:
</p>
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