[CentOS] From network-scripts to NetworkManager on a router : questions

Tue Feb 18 11:00:34 UTC 2020
Nicolas Kovacs <info at microlinux.fr>

Hi,

I'm running CentOS 7 on all my servers, in three different contexts :

   1. simple local server
   2. public facing server
   3. router/gateway/firewall

I'm currently in the process of moving my KISS-style 
network-scripts-style configurations to something more orthodox based on 
NetworkManager.

Scenarios (1) and (2) caused no problems, but (3) is giving me some 
headache. Let me take an example.

The router in my office is a PC Engines routerboard running CentOS 7. It 
has three NICs, and I use two of these.

WAN-facing NIC :

# /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-enp1s0
DEVICE=enp1s0
TYPE=Ethernet
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=static
IPADDR=192.168.1.1
NETMASK=255.255.255.0

LAN-facing NIC :

DEVICE=enp2s0
TYPE=Ethernet
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=static
IPADDR=192.168.2.1
NETMASK=255.255.255.0

Third NIC is disabled :

# /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-enp3s0
DEVICE=enp3s0
TYPE=Ethernet
ONBOOT=no

Gateway information :

# /etc/sysconfig/network
GATEWAY=192.168.1.254

The router is running Dnsmasq :

# /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver 127.0.0.1

Packet forwarding is enabled and handled through the firewall script. No 
need to go into the details for that.

This setup works perfectly as is. Now I'd like to move it to a 
NetworkManager-based configuration, and I have a couple questions about 
that.

I'm using NetworkManager TUI (nmtui) to configure my connections. I'm 
defining two profiles WAN (enp1s0) and LAN (enp2s0). With NetworkManager 
I have to configure gateway and DNS information on a per-interface basis.

1. Which interface should have the gateway information ?

2. In a similar manner, which interface should have the DNS server 
information ?

Cheers from the sunny South of France,

Niki

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