Adding a macvlan interface

[auspex]

I'm trying to do the equivalent of nmcli connection add ifname test type macvlan dev eth0 mode vepa

It appears I want to use NetworkManager().add_and_activate(), but then what is the specific_object argument? Is it the Device, and I have to create the Device separately from the Connection? It's supposedly a str, but it's not the path to the device (which gives me src/sdbus/sd_bus_internals_message.c Line: 217. sd_bus_message_append_basic(parser_state->message, basic_type, char_ptr_to_append) in function _parse_basic returned error number: 22)

Incidentally, if you omit specific_object, you get the unhelpful TypeError: Could not flatten the args rather than anything indicating a missing argument.

[igo95862]

Hello @auspex

What exactly are you trying to call add_and_activate_connection with? It is probably not a correct type.

See examples that add new connections like add-openvpn-connection-async.py. The important part is connection_type=ConnectionType.VPN.value that you want to swap to macvlan and vpn=VpnSettings that you want to swap for macvlan=MacvlanSettings(....

I highly recommend running the type checker like mypy as it will tell you when you call something with wrong types.

[auspex]

That's not at all far from what I was doing, but using NetworkManager, not SettingsManager. So, what's the NetworkManager add_and_activate_connection for?

[auspex]

Excellent, thank you. My solution, from your advice, was as simple as:

        profile = ConnectionProfile(
            connection=ConnectionSettings(
                autoconnect=True,
                connection_id=container,
                connection_type='macvlan',
                interface_name=container
            ),
            macvlan=MacvlanSettings(
                parent=default_route,
                mode=1 # vepa
            ),
            ipv4=Ipv4Settings(
                dhcp_hostname=container,
                method='auto',
                )
        )
        path = await NetworkManagerSettings().add_connection_unsaved(profile.to_dbus())
        # Now, NetworkManager should have a profile, but you still have to activate it
        await NM.activate_connection(path)

(I couldn't find an enum for mode=vepa—that would be nice :-) )