Re: Does anyone understand NetworkManager?

[David Abrahams <dave boost-consulting com>]

"Darren Albers" <dalbers gmail com> writes:

> On 8/14/06, David Abrahams <dave boost-consulting com> wrote:
> <snip>
>> How do wireless connection problems with network
>> manager/wpa_supplicant get solved?  Do they get solved, or do people
>> just give up?  Really, this is not meant to be a rant; I do deeply
>> appreciate that people work on and support this stuff for free.
>
> I guess I should add a "How to get help section to the FAQ" listing
> all the information someone might need to debug the connection.  Part
> of the problem is that many of the issues have been resolved and the
> fixes just not backported to the various distributions and many of the
> people who frequent this list are taking breaks at the end of the
> summer.
>
> When I saw your post I read the logs but didn't see anything that
> would indicate a problem.  I vaguely remember some issues with hidden
> SSID's that were fixed in 0.6.3 that the Ubuntu maintainer may not
> have backported.  

Are we talking about wpa_supplicant, NetworkManager, both, or
something else?  I'm happy to build/install the latest of whatever it
is I need.

> Can you try broadcasting your SSID and see if it
> works?

OK, when I get back home I'll try that.

> What type of card are you using?  

IBM T60p laptop builtin wireless.  I'm not sure who manufactures that
part of the circuit, but it's a Centrino Duo so probably Intel.

> I have seen a similar problem with an Atheros (Madwifi) card I have.
> I resolved it by building the latest madwifi drivers by hand (Which
> then required me to build the newer version of Network Manager).  If
> the problem is just that 0.6.2 can't reliably connect to hidden
> networks then broadcasting your SSID would be an easier fix.  

Lots of networks in the neighborhood and I thought it would add
security.  

> Not broadcasting your SSID is not more of a hindrance than a
> security measure anyway...

Can you explain why?  Even with hiding I recently saw an unexpected
DHCP client name, which may have been nothing, but it is why I
switched from WEP to WPA.  So if it _was_ someone on our network, I
guess hiding didn't stop them.

>> I am using Ubuntu Dapper, on which there is seemingly no
>> wpa_supplicant.conf, which makes it pretty hard to relate any
>> documentation I read to actual diagnosis on my machine.
>
> No need to post that, that is only needed if you are using some
> unusual EAP combination.

Yes, but I would like to understand how my software works and how to
control it.  When all the docs tell me to do this or that to my
configuration file and I can't find it, I am left rather at sea.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com