F12: NetworkManager-Firefox: Firefox is currently in offline mode and can't browse the Web

Dan Williams dcbw at redhat.com
Mon Nov 30 18:12:20 UTC 2009


On Mon, 2009-11-30 at 09:55 +0000, Terry Barnaby wrote:
> On 11/29/2009 11:30 PM, Dan Williams wrote:
> > On Sat, 2009-11-28 at 09:10 +0000, Terry Barnaby wrote:
> >> On 11/28/2009 08:35 AM, Rakesh Pandit wrote:
> >>> 2009/11/28 Terry Barnaby wrote:
> >>>> If the NetworkManager service is running, but not managing the current
> >>>> network connection, then Firefox starts up in offline mode.
> >>>>
> >>>> Is this a bug in NetworkManager or Firefox ?
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> This is odd behaviour and needs to be fixed. I would suggest open up a
> >>> bug against firefox. I know one can change
> >>> toolkit.networkmanager.disable preference, but it is a PITA for our
> >>> users. One of use cases is: Sometime network manager does not connect
> >>> me via my CDMA usb modem (in case signal is weak), but wvdial does and
> >>> once I switch from NM to wvdial, my firefox gets to offline mode,
> >>> which I don't expect it to as I am connected.
> >>>
> >> Ok, filed as: 542078
> >
> > NetworkManager is intended to control the default internet connection.
> > If NetworkManager cannot control the default internet connection, then
> > you may not want to use NetworkManager.
> >
> > In your case, you're using a mobile broadband device.  The real bug here
> > is that for whatever reason, NM/MM aren't connecting your modem, and we
> > should follow up on that bug instead.
> >
> > Dan
> >
> I am not using a mobile broadband device. The network connection my systems

My mistake.  I guess it was Rakesh Pandit who was using a CDMA 3G
connection.

> use is not just the Internet it is a local network LAN connection that also
> serves the internet. Most of my systems use a local network server which 
> provides NIS, /home and /data using NFS and VPN etc. I normally use the
> service "network" to bring up wired or wireless networking for this. Fedora,
> by default, uses NetworkManager to manage all network devices though. I use
> the service "network" as, for some reason, the NetworkManager service is
> started after the netfs and other services are started. Is there a reason
> for this ??

No particular reason, in fact that looks like a bug.  NM no longer
depends on HAL, but that dependency is still in the initscript, which
looks like it pushes NM later than netfs.

But in reality, you're looking for a dependency based initsystem which
we don't quite yet have.  There are already scripts that kick netfs to
mount stuff when NM brings the network up
(/etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/05-netfs), so you get asynchronous
bootup *and* your mounts.  The rest of the system, if it requires
something from the mounted directories, needs to be smart enough to know
that.

If you need to, you can set NETWORKWAIT=yes in /etc/sysconfig/network,
which causes the NetworkManager initscript to block until a network
connection is brought up, or 30 seconds have passed.

> I can obviously turn of the NetworkManager service, which I have done on the
> desktop systems. However, I also have a few Laptops that can roam. In F11 and
> before I have used the network and NetworkManager services. When the laptop
> boots away from home, the "network" service fails and I can then use the
> NetworkManager service to connect to whatever wireless network or G3 network is
> available.
> 
> It does seem sensible to me that the "system" provides applications with info
> on if the network is up (not just the Internet). The NetworkManager service
> seems the place to do this and it looks like the applications are starting
> to use it for this purpose.
> So maybe a generic NM "isNetworkUp()" API call is called for ?

See the other mail; the problem with a generic isUp() is that it simply
says hey, is there a connection?  It doesn't provide enough information
about the networking state of the system for anything to make an
intelligent decision about anything.  It's a "hey I'm connected to
something" but there's no information about *what* you're connected to;
whether it's a secure home network, whether it's a slow 3G network,
whether it's billed by the  minute or the hour or unlimited, etc.

Dan




More information about the fedora-devel-list mailing list