Network

Using wifi

Although dhcp will already work out of the box, wifi will not. Luckily there exists wpa_supplicant. First install the necessary packages:

# apk add networkmanager-wifi wpa_supplicant

Then configure /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf to use wpa_supplicant:

[main] 
dhcp=internal
plugins=ifupdown,keyfile

[ifupdown]
managed=true

[device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=yes
wifi.backend=wpa_supplicant

Now restart the service and you should be able to connect with wifi.

# rc-service networkmanager restart

There are different frontends to configure connections but for now install networkmanager-tui:

# apk add networkmanager-tui
# nmtui

It should be self-explanatory how to use it.

To make it possible for users to edit connections create the config file /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/no-polkit.conf with:

[main]
auth-polkit=false

Using a VPN

NetworkManager can already use WireGuard but to use other VPN's it might be necessary to install their corresponding plugin. For OpenVPN that would be:

# apk add networkmanager-openvpn

Security considerations

NetworkManager defaults are fine for normal usage but in terms of security they are definitely lacking.

MAC Randomization

Create a config file /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/mac-rand.conf to randomize the mac address every time your computer connects:

[connection-mac-randomization]
ethernet.cloned-mac-address=random
wifi.cloned-mac-address=random

IPv6 privacy

Although ipv6 will be turned off in the security section you can still turn it on by editing /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/ipv6-privacy.conf:

[connection]
ipv6.ip6-privacy=2

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