NetworkManager

NetworkManager is a network management software for Ethernet, Wifi, DSL, dialup, VPN, WiMAX and mobile broadband network connections.

Installation
NetworkManager requires an implementation of udev and D-Bus. On laptops and desktops, it is typically built with polkit to enable local users to configure it. It also optionally integrates with systemd, upower, consolekit and others.

It's a good idea to use dhclient from instead of  as 1.0.0 version is already doing. While dhcpcd in standalone mode provides some interesting features over dhclient, those will not be used by NetworkManager. Most upstream developers and most users of other distributions do use dhclient and it's therefore much better tested, works correctly with IPv6 and is generally a better DHCP client to be used with NetworkManager.

Portage knows the global USE flag networkmanager for enabling support for NetworkManager in other packages. Enabling this USE flag will make those packages pull in automatically:

USE flags
Possible USE flags for NetworkManager:

After changing use flags run the following command to update the system so the changes take effect:

You can manually install NetworkManager, if not already pulled in automatically from above command:

NetworkManager live ebuild (future 1.2 release)
NetworkManager is changing substantially and its feature set is slowly moving from a laptop oriented tool to a universal network management service configured using all sorts of tools from nmcli through nmtui to GUI tools like nm-applet, nm-connection-editor, Gnome Shell's network indicator, Gnome 3 control center, KDE plasma-nm and more.

The most convenient way is to add the ixit overlay using Layman.

Then you can install the desired NetworkManager release.

If anything goes wrong, contact User:Pavlix. Those are live ebuilds and therefore they can occasionally need updating. I'm also considering starting a separate overlay just for networking related tools, let me know if that would help you.

NetworkManager VPN plugins
The following packages can be used to add VPN support to the base NetworkManager agent:


 * - VPN connection using OpenConnect
 * - VPN connection using or
 * - VPN connection using OpenVPN server
 * - VPN connection to a PPTP server
 * - VPN connection to a SSTP server
 * - VPN connection using

Note that many, if not all, of these packages depend on both the and explicit configuration of the gtk use flag. Additionally, they are usually not compatible with the terminal interface, nmtui, and must be launched via nm-applet.

NetworkManager split DNS and DNSSEC support using unbound and dnssec-trigger
This doesn't yet work well with upstream releases nor in portage. But you can use Layman to add the [ixit overlay and install, and live ebuilds from there.

Now you can install the live ebuilds.

The main difference from simple DNSSEC support like in the dnsmasq plugin is that dnssec-trigger does its best to ensure that you get a working DNSSEC configuration even on your laptop roaming among third party networks with different capabilities as well as to allow you to still access local resources and that you can choose to work without DNSSEC when it cannot provide a working setup.

NetworkManager CLI and TUI
Those are included in the current versions of.

NetworkManager GUI bits in GTK
The systray applet is in and works in classic Xembed based systrays. If you don't have one in your desktop environment, you can use a standalone systray like stalonetray. The connection editor GUI in the same package as the applet. Note that this package serves all sorts of desktop environments and panels with systrays but it's no longer used by Gnome which has its own implementations in Gnome Shell and Gnome Control Center.

Also note that the current upstream version doesn't support the appindicator API and thus doesn't work in some systray implemenatation like that in current versions of KDE and Unity or the development versions of Enlightenment.

NetworkManager KDE GUIs

 * - KDE frontend
 * - KDE frontend

Kernel configuration
For Wifi devices enable also the following options:

Look at the udev page for kernel configuration needed for this NetworkManager dependency.

Configuration
On Gentoo, NetworkManager uses the plugdev group, so add your user to plugdev.

OpenRC
Remove any existing network management services (if installed):

You can now start NetworkManager:

To start NetworkManager at boot time, add it your default runlevel:

Systemd
Start NetworkManager now.

Enable NetworkManager to be started at boot time.

With NetworkManager older than 0.9.10 or when you have services that order themselves after  instead of , you may want to enable the   for. Note that it extends the boot time even if you don't have any services that need to wait for network connections.

When writing your own systemd services, you can easily make them wait for NetworkManager to configure the boot time connections. With NetworkManager 0.9.10 and later it works even without explicitly enabling the network-online.service.

Setting a hostname
If you built NetworkManager with USE=dhclient, you can set a hostname like this:

nm-applet and X session startup
To be able to get nm-applet started when starting your light X session or light desktop environment, just put the following line in your file:

For support, add the following lines before the previous line. This will ease password management for GnuPG, ssh and Wifi:

Fixing nm-applet insufficient privileges
If nm-applet fails to create new networks with the error "Insufficient Privileges," then it could be a policy kit issue. Create the following file:

This lets all users in the plugdev group control network manager.

Dnsmasq
NetworkManager can be set up to use Dnsmasq as a local DNS server that passes the DNS queries on to your provider's DNS server. /etc/resolv.conf will be set to point to 127.0.0.1, where dnsmasq runs and processes the queries. This can be useful for example if an application chroots for security reasons and before doing so copies /etc/resolv.conf. Then it would never be informed about changes to the DNS servers as your laptop moves from Wifi to Wifi.

Setup of dnsmasq is simple:

Then restart NetworkManager.

DNSSEC

Dnsmasq can optionally validate DNSSEC data while passing through queries (must be compiled with the dnssec use flag). This can be accomplished by adding these lines to the NetworkManager dnsmasq config file:

The trusted anchor can be found here. After this change dnsmasq will return SERVFAIL and no DNS data if the validation fails. If the validation succeeds it sets the ad flag. In case the domain does not support DNSSEC dnsmasq behaves as before.

If your ISP's DNS server does not forward DNSSEC data then this will fail. In that case you can uncomment the last line, but it will defy the purpose of DNSSEC. Google's server 8.8.8.8 provise DNSSEC data.

Hostname problems
The standard "keyfile" plugin does not forward the hostname in default configuration - to avoid having it changed upon network connection, add the following section to your NetworkManager.conf and enter your hostname accordingly: