Re: Does anyone understand NetworkManager?

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Mon, 2006-08-14 at 10:46 -0400, David Abrahams wrote:
> Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com> writes:
> 
> > On Mon, 2006-08-14 at 09:42 -0400, Darren Albers wrote:
> >> 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.  Can you try broadcasting your SSID and see if it
> >> works?
> >
> > That would be a big help.  Some drivers (madwifi in particular) don't
> > seem to work well with hidden SSIDs and wpa_supplicant and
> > NetworkManager, and that interaction isn't well understood.  It has
> > something to do with AP_SCAN and the network options that are passed to
> > wpa_supplicant.
> >
> > Can you try with wpa_supplicant alone, constructing the necessary
> > wpa_supplicant.conf, and see if that works?  Please use the 'wext'
> > driver with wpa_suppliant.  
> 
> Could you point me at some detailed instructions?  I don't know how to
> "try with wpa_supplicant alone" or set up its drivers.
> Should I do this with or without hidden SSIDs?  With the Ubuntu
> release, or something newer?

Any document on setting up wpa_supplicant would work for this; just
remember to stop NetworkManager first.  I don't have any links offhand,
but the package for wpa_supplicant should include a sample config file
that may get you started.

> > If you're able to connect fairly consistently, please post that
> > config file, removing sensitive information of course.
> 
> OK
> 
> >> > 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.
> >
> > Unless you can get it working with plain wpa_supplicant, that is.  There
> > have been some intermittent issues with the config which NM sends to
> > wpa_supplicant not connecting, but a plain wpa_supplicant config doing
> > fine.  I'm sort of holding off on looking into that until we move to a
> > dbus-enabled wpa_supplicant to determine whether it's the control
> > interface stupidity, or NM itself passing wrong combinations of options.
> 
> Oh, NM sends config to wpa_supplicant directly?

Correct.  NM opens a pipe to wpa_supplicant and talks to it directly
rather than writing out a config file.  For one, writing out a config
file is a security risk, because your passphrase is in the file.
Second, error reporting sucks, so NM can't be intelligent about how it
tells you that wpa_supplicant couldn't connect, and why.

Dan