[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#729783: network-manager: Add network connectivy test using http://network-test.debian.org/nm

[Michael Biebl]

Hi Javier,

On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 12:07:19PM +0100, Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña wrote:
> I've recently asked our DSA team to create a new network-test.debian.org
> service (See [rt.debian.org #4756) to be able to script tests of network
> connectivity with a stable service.
> 
> Originally I intended this service to improve the 'network-test' script in the
> ifupdown-extra package, however, in light of the new Network-Manager capability
> to check connectivity status, I think it can be useful for network-manager
> users too.
> 
> The service is now running and it is a static Virtual Host distributed along
> several Debian-managed machines with IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity.
> 
> Specifically for Network-Manager, based on NetworkManager.conf(5), I've setup a
> URL for network connectivity tests which is now alive and running as you can see here:
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> $ echo -e "GET /nm HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: network-test.debian.org\r\nConnection: close\r\n\r\n" | nc network-test.debian.org 80
> HTTP/1.1 200 OK
> Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 10:52:46 GMT
> Server: Apache
> Last-Modified: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 16:28:43 GMT
> ETag: "1019d211-19-4eb4dcee584c0"
> Accept-Ranges: bytes
> Content-Length: 25
> X-NetworkManager-Status: online
> Connection: close
> Content-Type: text/plain
> 
> NetworkManager is online
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> I would appreciate if you would consider:
> 
> a) testing this service and see if it suits Network-Manager's requirements
> b) changin Network-Manager in order to add the following when creating a new managed connection:
> 
> ------------------------------------------
> [connectivity]
> uri=http://network-test.debian.org/nm
> ------------------------------------------
> 
> That way, when our Debian users setup a network connection they can test that
> it has full end-to-end connectivity and will be able to detect the following
> situations:
> 
> - systems connected to cable connections which receive an DHCP assignment but
>   are not fully connected to the Internet - as is the case with corporate
>   connections which have network firewalls in place which require the use of
>   network proxies for Internet access
> 
> - systems connected to hotspots using WiFi which can connect and get a
>   DHCP assignment but are forced to go through a captive portal before Internet
>   access is granted (common use case for public/hotel WiFi hotspots) 
> 
> Please let me know if you need help in implementing the above changes. I'm not
> familiar enough with Network-Managers' codebase to produce a patch, but could
> try to work on it if assistance is needed.

Thanks a lot for getting this service setup.
I'm a bit worried to enable such a feature by default though since this
is some kind of privacy breach. This should be enabled explicitly by the
administrator.

I'm considering adding a short section to README.Debian about
connectivity checking and/or add it to NetworkManager.conf but commented
out.

Would that suffice for you?

Michael