Re: A couple of minor issues with NM

[Timothy Murphy <tim birdsnest maths tcd ie>]

On Saturday 23 December 2006 00:42, Darren Albers wrote:

> > It always tries to connect to a network I very seldom use.
>
> Are both open network or is one WEP and the other open?  I /think/
> that Network Manager will not automatically connect to an unencrypted
> network but I am not certain since I rarely use an unencrypted
> networks since I got my Aircard.

Unfortunately I find it impossible to connect to an encrypted network -
when I enter the key NM never connects -
there is nothing wrong with the key since Windows connects 
without any problem.

> > Incidentally, where does it store "profiles" or indeed any information?
> > Is it available to the user?
>
> It is under gconf:
> http://live.gnome.org/DarrenAlbers/NetworkManagerFAQ#head-bef25c7fff6853c70
>2b745626a9b6fb40058f0e4

I read your FAQ, and deleted the entries in .gconf/system/networking/wireless/
relating to the network I did not want to connect to.
But this didn't appear to have the slightest effect;
when I re-booted the deleted network still came up.
Evidently the data is kept somewhere else as well.

I should say that I am using KDE rather than Gnome.
It seems that NetworkManager leans fairly heavily towards Gnome.
Maybe it is not a good choice for KDE users?

> > 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.
>
> Don't blame Linux for that, blame the hardware vendors who don't
> support it... Though the Orinoco card should work fine, I used one for
> awhile and never experienced the problems you describe.   Do you have
> the same issues when using the normal Network-Admin tool?

I'm afraid I do blame the Linux WiFi developers.
For some reason the whole setup is in an appalling mess,
with files all over the place, as I said.
There is nothing wrong with the orinoco_cs driver;
once I get connected it works perfectly.

I take it by "the normal Network-Admin tool"
you mean system-config-network and the GUI variants of this?
I find these very bad, but in a different way to NM.
They simply don't work, in my experience.
The only reasonably certain way of setting up WiFi in my experience
is to edit the files in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts one's self.

> Have you checked your systems logs to see if it reports why the
> association is being stopped?

Yes, repeatedly -
when it doesn't work it says the delay was too long:
----------------------------------------------------------------
Dec 23 00:44:42 martha NetworkManager: <information>    Activation (eth0) 
started...
Dec 23 00:44:42 martha NetworkManager: <information>    Activation (eth0) 
Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) scheduled...
Dec 23 00:44:42 martha NetworkManager: <information>    Activation (eth0) 
Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) started...
Dec 23 00:44:42 martha NetworkManager: <information>    Activation (eth0) 
Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) scheduled...
Dec 23 00:44:42 martha NetworkManager: <information>    Activation (eth0) 
Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) complete.
Dec 23 00:44:42 martha NetworkManager: <information>    Activation (eth0) 
Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) starting...
Dec 23 00:44:42 martha NetworkManager: <information>    Activation 
(eth0/wireless): access point 'dd-wrt' is unencrypted, n
o key needed.
Dec 23 00:44:43 martha NetworkManager: <information>    SUP: sending 
command 'INTERFACE_ADD eth0                wext    /va
r/run/wpa_supplicant '
Dec 23 00:44:43 martha NetworkManager: <information>    SUP: response was 'OK'
Dec 23 00:44:43 martha NetworkManager: <information>    SUP: sending 
command 'AP_SCAN 2'
Dec 23 00:44:43 martha NetworkManager: <information>    SUP: response was 'OK'
Dec 23 00:44:43 martha NetworkManager: <information>    SUP: sending 
command 'ADD_NETWORK'
Dec 23 00:44:43 martha NetworkManager: <information>    SUP: response was '0'
Dec 23 00:44:43 martha NetworkManager: <information>    SUP: sending 
command 'SET_NETWORK 0 ssid 64642d777274'
Dec 23 00:44:43 martha NetworkManager: <information>    SUP: response was 'OK'
Dec 23 00:44:43 martha NetworkManager: <information>    SUP: sending 
command 'SET_NETWORK 0 key_mgmt NONE'
Dec 23 00:44:43 martha NetworkManager: <information>    SUP: response was 'OK'
Dec 23 00:44:43 martha NetworkManager: <information>    SUP: sending 
command 'ENABLE_NETWORK 0'
Dec 23 00:44:43 martha NetworkManager: <information>    SUP: response was 'OK'
Dec 23 00:44:43 martha kernel: eth0: New link status: Disconnected (0002)
Dec 23 00:44:43 martha NetworkManager: <information>    Activation (eth0) 
Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) complete.
Dec 23 00:44:51 martha NetworkManager: <information>    eth0: link timed out.
Dec 23 00:45:03 martha NetworkManager: <information>    Activation 
(eth0/wireless): association took too long (>20s), faili
ng activation.
Dec 23 00:45:03 martha NetworkManager: <information>    Activation (eth0) 
failure scheduled...
Dec 23 00:45:03 martha NetworkManager: <information>    Activation (eth0) 
failed for access point (dd-wrt)
Dec 23 00:45:03 martha NetworkManager: <information>    Activation (eth0) 
failed.
Dec 23 00:45:03 martha NetworkManager: <information>    Deactivating device 
eth0.
----------------------------------------------------------------

However, the next time I re-boot NM works fine, 
completing the whole operation in less than a second.

> > 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?
>
> No, but is it a hex or ascii key?   I just tried it on my system and I
> was able to enter the passphrase and connect right away.

What passphrase?
I don't have any such phrase - just a network key (hex)
which seems to work perfectly well in Windows.
Actually, it works perfectly well in the usual WiFi setup in Linux,
when entered as key=... in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 .

> > 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.
>
> Then use Network-Admin or wifi-radar....  Network-Manager is not the
> only tool available to manage wireless networks.

The reason I am looking at NM is just because system-config-network is so bad.
I haven't heard of wifi-radar - I'll look at it.

> Network Manager is doing ONE thing and that is manage your networks.

I guess I don't want anyone to "manage my networks" -
I'm quite happy to do that myself.
I just want a program that will connect my laptop
to whatever WiFi LAN it finds,
asking for ESSID and key, if necessary.



-- 
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