Re: systemd-networkd managed wireless networks

[James Prestwood <prestwoj@gmail.com>]

Hi Donald,

On 2/28/25 2:55 PM, Donald wrote:
> Top of the morning,
>
> Do the iwd dev team strongly recommend having iwd manage the wireless
> interface with:
>
> [General]
> EnableNetworkConfiguration=true
I think it depends on your use case really. For example the devices I 
work with are WiFi-only, so using IWD to manage DHCP makes a lot of 
sense as it takes netword/networkmanager/dhcpd etc out of the equation.
>
> I am asking as I am using iwd in conjunction with systemd-networkd,
> and was caught by surprise that disconnecting from my ap in iwd:
>
> iwctl station wlan0 disconnect
>
> does not result in the associated networkd instance from being degraded:
>
>                     Link File: n/a
>                  Network File: /etc/systemd/network/wireless.network
>                         State: routable (configured)
>                  Online state: online
>                          Type: wlan
>                          MTU: 1500 (min: 68, max: 1500)
>                         QDisc: pfifo_fast
> IPv6 Address Generation Mode: eui64
>            Wi-Fi access point: (null) (00:00:00:00:00:00)
>      Number of Queues (Tx/Rx): 1/1
>                       Address: 192.168.50.153 (DHCPv4 via 192.168.50.1)
>                                fe80::ea4f:25ff:fe44:f60b
>                       Gateway: 192.168.50.1
>                           DNS: 192.168.50.240
>                                1.1.1.1
>                                192.168.50.1
>                                2600:1700:7c10:d0ff::1
>                           NTP: 192.168.50.1
>
> It is interesting to me that networkd has enough insight to know the
> ap's name, but still does not change the state off of: routable
> (configured) or adjust the online state.

This does seem odd, but I'm not sure what the expected behavior is with 
systemd-networkd to be honest. You could check the IWD debug logs, but I 
know IWD releases its IP address when disconnected so I'm not sure why 
systemd-networkd is unable to see that. It should all come over via rtnl 
events which systemd-networkd listens to.

Thanks,

James

>
> Yours sincerely,
> Donald
>