NetworkManager update

Matthew Saltzman mjs at ces.clemson.edu
Thu Apr 27 17:04:24 UTC 2006


On Thu, 27 Apr 2006, Rob Andrews wrote:

> On 27-Apr-2006 14:43.49 (BST), Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> > (4) For real help with NM, send your issues to the developers' list,
> > networkmanager-list at gnome.org (subscribe at http://mail.gnome.org).  For
> > real bugs, file them in Fedora's Bugzilla.  The goal of NM is to make
> > managing connections to multiple networks painless.  If it isn't quite
> > there yet, the developers can use all the help you can provide.
>
> I haven't posted regarding my gripe with NetworkManager yet, but since
> it's not a bug with NetworkManager itself it doesn't really fit on the
> developers list.
>
> My machines are all wirelessly connected and use WPA. Most of them are
> headless, so I don't have the cute GNOME system tray icon to select and
> switch my network. I would have assumed that I could craft a solution
> that didn't require me to login to activate WPA with the wpa_supplicant
> and network-scripts, but they seem to be blissfully ignorant of each
> other. Enough so that network startup is priority 10 and wpa_supplicant
> defaults to priority 12. So I don't get networking without having to
> manually prod it.
>
> I guess my solution is to craft an init script to daemonise wpa_cli
> after starting wpa_supplicant and ifup/ifdown upon (dis)association with
> the wireless network, then set ONBOOT=no for the wireless interfaces.

This sounds like a bug, maybe in initscripts.  NM isn't really designed 
for headless machines living in a relatively static environment.  The 
traditional scripts should do the right thing.  Bugzilla is probably the 
best place to get this looked at.


> Secondly, on hosts with wired and wireless adapters (I have some machines
> with crossover links to each other) NetworkManager gives me the choice of
> having one port or the other active, but not both. Again, if I set
> static interface information for one interface, then bring the other up
> when NetworkManager reads my network key from the keyring upon login,
> then the wired interface gets shut down.

IIRC, supporting simultaneous interfaces in NM is on the TODO list.

>
> It seems to me that for both these situations, NetworkManager really
> isn't the solution for WPA, but no provision is made to allow
> wpa_supplicant to cooperate nicely with the current network scripts.
>
> Is there a plan to rectify this, or is the future response to all WPA
> questions "NetworkManager"?

It shouldn't be, as I said above.

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs




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