[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#755202: network-manager: keeps creating and using new connection "eth0" that does not work

[Joseph Rawson]

Hi!

I just came across this bug after reading the latest status report:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2015/03/msg00002.html

I have a laptop that has been running jessie for a few months.  I use
NetworkManager to configure the wifi, but use /etc/network/interfaces for
eth0.

I experience a very similar problem when booting at a coffee shop where I
use wifi and ethernet is disconnected.  In this circumstance, eth0 fails
to get a lease (not surprising as there's no wire), but the exit hook
calls avahi-autoipd (/usr/sbin/avahi-autoipd -wD).  This is supposed to
set an ip address for eth0 until it is otherwise assigned, AFAICT.  The
problem seems to occur when setting a route, which seems to be done in
/etc/avahi/avahi-autoipd.action.  This is mentioned in this bug report: 
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=533233 (wishlist bug).

The metric for my wlan0 route was 1024, so I set the base metric to 1025,
instead of 1000, in the autoipd.action file, and my wifi route wasn't
precluded by avahi-autoipd.

I don't know how much help this is, since I'm not really using
NetworkManager for ethernet, and only wifi, but if NetworkManager uses
dhclient, then encounters the avahi-autoipd hooks, the result could be
similar to the situation I described.