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35a32c5
(Get the code!)
Alan,
your comment went in while I was writing the above. Hope it's cleared things up a bit. There seem to be two issues here with Network Manager:
1. It doesn't play nicely with hard-coded interfaces in /etc/network/
2. If eth1 (for example) gets reassigned from a wired interface to a wireless one and back again, with the user (me) switching from static Ip to DHCP and back again, it starts to get in a mess.
With reference to security, a further point is that some of us frequently set up VNC with very weak passwords *when* it is assumed that only connections from the LAN will be made and the outside world is not going to have access. The checkbox labelled "configure network automatically to accept connections" is not clear at *all* [1] that it will try to configure the *router* to open up access to the outside world. Only in the tooltip - easily missed - does it mention the router. *My* assumption was that this checkbox referred to something on the local machine's networking. The upshot is that this *could* lead to someone setting a weak password and then opening themselves up to the world.
The attempt to establish whether access from the outside world is possible is not in itself a bad idea - far from it! - but it should be clearer what's going on and it should connect to something like vnc-test.
[1] it's also badly phrased, perhaps in a mis-guided attempt to avoid a split infinitive. Is it "automatically configure network to accept connections" or "configure network to automatically accept connections"?