Re: systemd-networkd managed wireless networks

[Denis Kenzior <denkenz@gmail.com>]

Hi Donald,

On 2/28/25 4:55 PM, Donald wrote:
> Top of the morning,
> 
> Do the iwd dev team strongly recommend having iwd manage the wireless
> interface with:

This greatly depends on your use case.  If you are integrating iwd with another 
network manager that doesn't support iwd's NetworkConfigurationAgent APIs 
(ConnMan, systemd-networkd), then using EnableNetworkConfiguration=true is not 
what you want.  Recent versions of NetworkManager do support this feature and 
are thus able to let iwd figure out the network configuration details and apply 
the settings to the system.

> 
> [General]
> EnableNetworkConfiguration=true
> 
> 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:
> 

That may be a question for systemd-networkd folks.  'station disconnect' should 
result in iwd bringing the interface down.  I don't see why it would continue 
having addresses assigned.

>                     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.
> 

Perhaps it has to do with some roaming hacks that systemd-networkd introduced 
recently?

Regards,
-Denis