Re: A couple of minor issues with NM

[Timothy Murphy <tim birdsnest maths tcd ie>]

On Friday 22 December 2006 17:52, Darren Albers wrote:

> > 1) I have two WiFi networks in this house,
> > but I always use one of them, with ESSID dd-wrt.
> > I read somewhere that NM would work out which network
> > was usually used;
> > but in my case this does not seem to work -
> > NM always chooses the other network,
> > although I never use it.
> >
> > Is there some config file where one can specify which network
> > one wants to use?
> > (I know I could delete one network from NM,
> > but I prefer not to do that, as I very occasionally use it.)
>
> If NM sees multiple networks that it has profiles for it will connect
> to the one you last connected to.  Is that not the behavior you are
> seeing?

No.
It always tries to connect to a network I very seldom use.

Incidentally, where does it store "profiles" or indeed any information?
Is it available to the user?

> > 3) Is there any documentation, eg tutorial or FAQ, on NM?
> > The Fedora implementation seems to have very little useful information.
>
> http://live.gnome.org/DarrenAlbers/NetworkManagerFAQ

Thanks, I'll study that.

> > 4) NM loses connection every few hours,
> > and it seems very hard to re-connect.
> > Basically, I try "service NetworkManager restart",
> > which seems to work about half the time;
> > if that doesn't work, I re-boot.
> > Is there a simpler way of going about it?
> >
> > Why incidentally does it lose connection?
> > The WiFi strength, as given by NM,
> > seems to vary wildly without any change in the position
> > of any of the computers involved,
> > varying between 50% and 0% over a few hours.
>
> I am not sure but it sounds like a signal issue, for example until I
> moved my AP I would lose connection everytime the microwave was run!
> Later one of my Neighbors got a fancy MIMO router that kept hopping
> channels and killing my connection on one side of my house etc...
> What type of Network Card is this?

I'm using an Orinoco PCMCIA Gold Card on my laptop,
and Linksys WRT54GL as an Access Point on my desktop.
I might say that this works perfectly under Windows.
Sadly, I find Linux WiFi rather a mess, to put it mildly.
There seem to be files and programs all over the place
which might or might not have some relevance.

> > 5) Not really an NM question,
> > but I have a Linksys WRT54GL running dd-wrt .
> > Does anyone know how to install a WEP key on it?
> > [I know WEP is not very secure;
> > but it is the only encryption my PCMCIA card understands.]
>
> Yes, go to Wireless, then wireless security and select WEP

Thanks, I tried that but unfortunately it seemed to have
a disastrous effect on NM.
Basically, my WEP key was never accepted.
(It does not accept the WEP key on my old network either,
which works perfectly with Windows.)

What is more, after failing to accept my key
NM said it could not find any wireless networks,
where previously it saw two of them.

Has anyone else had problems getting NM to accept a WEP key?

I'm pretty critical of NetworkManager at the moment.
It seems to me it tries to be too clever
(a common fault with Linux applications)
instead of being satisfied to do one thing, and do that properly,
as Ken Thompson recommended.

I'd be more than happy if NM worked well with WiFi;
I'm perfectly happy to use other programs for Bluetooth or Ethernet.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland