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Allow to generate Netplan configuration (using systemd-networkd or NetworkManager backend)

Lukas Märdian requested to merge slyon/netcfg:netplan-enablement into master

This MR enables netcfg to generate Netplan configuration in /etc/netplan/, besides ifupdown and NetworkManager config.

If netplan-generator is detected to be installed on the target system, it will be used as the primary means of network configuration and we're creating a Netplan configuration in /etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yaml. By default, systemd-networkd is used as the Netplan backend. Should network-manager be detected to be installed as well, it will be made the default renderer.

The configuration is copied to the target system and rendered to systemd-networkd/''NetworkManager'' configuration by the netplan-generator (a systemd generator, written in C). And systemd-networkd/NetworkManager will bring up the networking for us on reboot.

See demo of this merge request in a recent blog post of mine: Creating a Netplan enabled system through Debian-Installer

(See my Netplan session at DebConf23 for more details: A declarative approach to Linux networking with Netplan).

Future work

  • Consider deprecating WEP "secured" wireless networks in d-i
  • Consider using libnetplan's C API, instead of writing the YAML files directly.
  • Find consensus about bumping netplan-generator to Priority: important, in order to make it part of the base installation
  • Investigate enablement and bring up of related systemd-networkd services, such as systemd-resovled, which should go hand-in-hand.
Edited by Lukas Märdian

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