14 DAY TRIAL // Lubomir Rintel, one of the developers working on the widely-used open-source network management solution for GNU/Linux distributions NetworkManager, announced the release of NetworkManager 1.4.4.
NetworkManager 1.4.4 is the latest stable and most advanced build of the software, which should be used by all Linux-based operating systems that prefer this graphical solution for helping users to easily connect to Wi-Fi and wired networks, as well as Point To Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) or VPN (Virtual Private Network) connections.
Notable changes include the ability to correctly select the primary IP address by preserving the order in which IP addresses are being configured by NetworkManager, support for avoiding the read of permanent MAC addresses before the respective network device is initialized by udev.
"This avoids a race where NetworkManager might detect the MAC address of the wrong interface," reads the release announcement. Talking about race conditions, NetworkManager 1.4.4 fixes one such issue that was encountered when attempting to rename network interfaces, which could make NetworkManager to incorrectly detect a Wi-Fi interface as an Ethernet one.
Users are urged to update to NetworkManager 1.4.4 as soon as possible
Another race condition was patched in NetworkManager 1.4.4, in the libnm library implementation, which could have caused a client to hang if the last value of a property or object array type vanished. In the same manner, this release resolves a possible hang with the nmcli command-line tool, which occurred on D-Bus object fetch failure.
Last but not least, NetworkManager will no longer de-configure network devices that can't be taken over during a shutdown operation, which makes it possible to restart the network without interrupting the connection. This feature is supported for most device types. NetworkManager 1.4.4 is now available for download, and you should update as soon as possible.