netplan "critical" flag - unclear docs
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Netplan |
New
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
In the netplan documentation, the "critical" flag is described as follows:
> Designate the connection as “critical to the system”, meaning that special
> care will be taken by to not release the assigned IP when the daemon is
> restarted. (not recognized by NetworkManager)
This is missing key information to help the user decide whether or not to use this flag. In particular, it does not explain what the downsides of designating a connection as "critical" are, under what circumstances one would not want to designate a connection as "critical", and indeed why it's not the default.
Further searching finds references to different handling of addresses acquired via DHCP; however, the setting also changes the behaviour of interfaces without DHCP (at least on Ubuntu 20.04 with networkd).
It would be good to expand the description of this flag (or link to expanded discussion elsewhere) to enable users to weigh the pros and cons of designating connections as "critical".
