bobpeers -> blog

After installing Fedora 10, Network Manager correctly identified my network interfaces as eth0 for wireless and eth1 for wired. However my wired connection used to be my default connection named Auto eth1 so Network Manager would connect on start up and this is the way I prefer.

Since installing Fedora 10 my eth1 connection is now called System eth1 but it is not set to connect automatically. I also cannot change this setting since, when I try to edit my connection, the edit button for System eth1 is greyed out and so not available.

The workaround was easy enough, I just created a new wired connection with exactly the same settings as the System eth1 but set to connect automatically. So now I have entries for System eth1 and Default eth1 that are effectively the same. My point is, why can’t I edit the System eth1, and if that’s the correct set up, what’s the point in this connection?

I decided to switch to using nameservers from OpenDNS just to see if it made a difference compared to my ISP’s nameservers. You don’t need to sign up if you don’t want, you are free to just use their nameservers as you wish (which are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220).

The main problem is that I use Network Manager to control my network and if you try to edit the connection from Network Manager but still use dhcp then it will, by default, just get the nameservers from your ISP and ignore any other servers you manually add.

Fortunately the solution is very simple. As root open the file /etc/dhclient-eth0.conf (assuming your wired interface is eth0 of course) and add the line as shown.

# vi /etc/dhclient-eth0.conf
prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222,208.67.220.220; #add this line
send host-name "your-hostname";  # temporary RHL ifup addition

Next just restart your network.

# /sbin/service network restart

At this point I could not see my wired connection in Network Manager (the entry was greyed out) so I manually started the interface.

# /sbin/ifup eth0

This brought eth0 up and from then on Network Manager worked fine with the new nameservers. It might just be psychological but browsing does seems slightly faster, just a little bit less delay with each page load. I’ll leave it set up like this for a while to see how it goes, it’s easy enough to switch back at any time but for now I’m very happy.