#1041054 dracut-network: Please support systemd-networkd and network-manager as alternative to isc-dhcp-client

#1041054#5
Date:
2023-07-14 14:27:19 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

ISC has announced the end of life for ISC DHCP as of the end of 2022.
Kea is the recommended successor of the DHCP server. This bug report is
about replacing the DHCP client dhclient. dracut-network depends on
isc-dhcp-client.

Judging from the directories
/usr/lib/dracut/modules.d/01systemd-networkd and
/usr/lib/dracut/modules.d/35network-manager dracut probably supports
systemd-networkd and network-manager as well.

So I suggest to change the dependency on isc-dhcp-client into
"systemd | network-manager | isc-dhcp-client"

#1041054#10
Date:
2023-07-20 13:20:21 UTC
From:
To:
Hello Team,

I opened an MR to resolve this -
https://salsa.debian.org/debian/dracut/-/merge_requests/23 .

As an upstream dracut maintainer, I'd like to add that:

1./ network-legacy is still likely the most tested and trusted dracut
networking backend. The entire dracut upstream testing is still on
network-legacy as other networking backends are not yet stable.

2./ network-manager requires dbus in initramfs, which is known to have
problems - https://github.com/dracutdevs/dracut/issues/2378

3./ Not all dracut kernel command line options are supported by all
dracut networking backends -
https://github.com/dracutdevs/dracut/issues/1876


Benjamin, if you have a chance to test other Dracut networking backends
(e.g. systemd-networkd or perhaps even connman) on Debian and report back
that would be useful both for the Debian and for the Dracut upstream
communities.

Best,
  Laszlo

#1041054#15
Date:
2023-07-31 10:35:10 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

Thanks.

I have near zero experience with dracut. I opened this bug report
because we want to replace isc-dhcp-client in Ubuntu.

I suggest that someone with experience (e.g. the Debian maintainer)
could write an autopkgtest for testing this automatically. You can get
some inspiration for it from the qemu-net autopkgtest for initramfs-
tools:
https://salsa.debian.org/kernel-team/initramfs-tools/-/merge_requests/77
This test builds a stripped down root filesystem image that checks that
the boot was successful. It builds a initramfs and boots that with qemu.