masking NetworkManager ineffective without also masking network-manager

[Lauri Tirkkonen]

On xenial (systemd 229), 'systemctl mask NetworkManager' is ineffective; I can still start the service (and in fact it starts on boot). This may be due to an interaction with an init.d script with a different name ("network-manager").

    root@test-paniikki:~# systemctl is-enabled NetworkManager network-manager
    enabled
    enabled
    root@test-paniikki:~# systemctl mask NetworkManager
    Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service to /dev/null.
    root@test-paniikki:~# systemctl is-enabled NetworkManager network-manager
    masked
    masked
    root@test-paniikki:~# systemctl start NetworkManager; echo $?
    0
    root@test-paniikki:~# systemctl status --no-pager NetworkManager
    ● NetworkManager.service - Network Manager
       Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service; masked; vendor preset: enabled)
       Active: active (running) since Mon 2016-05-23 15:39:09 EEST; 9s ago
     Main PID: 6155 (NetworkManager)
        Tasks: 6 (limit: 512)
       CGroup: /system.slice/NetworkManager.service
               ├─6155 /usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon
               ├─6167 /sbin/dhclient -d -q -sf /usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-helper -pf /va...
               └─6182 /usr/sbin/dnsmasq --no-resolv --keep-in-foreground --no-hosts --bind-in...

Only if 'network-manager' is also masked will the service fail to start:

    root@test-paniikki:~# systemctl mask network-manager
    Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/network-manager.service to /dev/null.
    root@test-paniikki:~# systemctl stop NetworkManager
    root@test-paniikki:~# systemctl start NetworkManager
    Failed to start NetworkManager.service: Unit NetworkManager.service is masked.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Correct, network-manager is the canonical name that init.d scripts refer to.

[Lauri Tirkkonen (lotheac)]

Sorry, perhaps I was unclear in my original description: For the masking to be effective *both* network-manager and NetworkManager need to be masked, or NetworkManager.service will start on boot. 'systemctl status network-manager' will show information about NetworkManager.service so it seems to be an alias that works for things other than masking, which does not feel like it's intended, whatever the canonical name.