Re: How NM chooses between wired and wireless connections ?

[Chris Jones <jonesc hep phy cam ac uk>]

On Friday 12 May 2006 3:37 pm, Dan Williams wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-05-12 at 13:38 +0100, Chris Jones wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I'm running, NM 0.6.2 on an FC5 laptop, with wireless (ipw2100) and wired
> > (b44) connections.
> >
> > NM runs more or less perfectly fine, but I have noticed a few oddities.
> >
> > 1. Commonly I turn the machine on in an environment where I have both a
> > wireless and wired connection available. In this case, NM first connects
> > to the wireless connection, then 5-10 secs later seems to noticed there
> > is a wired connection, and switches over to that. Why does NM do this,
> > and not (as I would want) just used the wired connection from the start ?
>
> Can you post the output of your lspci and possibly the output
> of /usr/bin/nm-tool as well?  This sounds like the driver for your
> network card isn't very good at detecting the link state.  I've got a
> Latitude C610 with a 3c59x card, and that only checks the link state
> every 60 seconds, which really, really sucks.  Drivers need to get
> better in this regard.

sure.

[root localhost ~]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82855PM Processor to I/O Controller 
(rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82855PM Processor to AGP Controller (rev 
03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) 
USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) 
USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) 
USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI 
Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 81)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge 
(rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 
01)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM 
(ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 
Modem Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV31M [GeForce FX 
Go5650] (rev a1)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401 100Base-T (rev 01)
02:01.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI4510 PC card Cardbus Controller 
(rev 02)
02:01.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCI4510 IEEE-1394 Controller
02:03.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini 
PCI Adapter (rev 04)

[root localhost ~]#  /usr/bin/nm-tool

NetworkManager Tool

State: connected

- Device: 
eth0 ----------------------------------------------------------------
  NM Path:           /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/eth0
  Type:              Wired
  Driver:            b44
  Active:            yes
  HW Address:        <removed>

  Capabilities:
    Supported:       yes
    Carrier Detect:  yes
    Speed:           100 Mb/s

  Wired Settings
    Hardware Link:   yes

  IP Settings:
    IP Address:      131.111.66.35
    Subnet Mask:     255.255.255.0
    Broadcast:       131.111.66.255
    Gateway:         131.111.66.62
    Primary DNS:     131.111.49.55
    Secondary DNS:   131.111.49.22


- Device: 
eth1 ----------------------------------------------------------------
  NM Path:           /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/eth1
  Type:              802.11 Wireless
  Driver:            ipw2100
  Active:            no
  HW Address:        <removed>

  Capabilities:
    Supported:       yes
    Speed:           11 Mb/s

  Wireless Settings
    Scanning:        yes
    WEP Encryption:  yes
    WPA Encryption:  yes
    WPA2 Encryption: yes

  Wireless Networks (* = Current Network)

and, just for kicks

[root localhost ~]# uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.16-1.2111_FC5 #1 Thu May 4 21:16:58 EDT 2006 
i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux


>
> > 2. I'm running the gnome applet in KDE. This works fine, but one thing I
> > have noticed is NM does not store WEP passwords in this case - I have to
> > enter it each time. I suspect it is because some gnome service is not
> > starting, which NM uses to store the passwords (??). Is there anything I
> > can do to make this work (conversely, is the KDE frontend likely to be
> > available soon :) )
>
> It's already out there if you compile from sources, but it hasn't been
> imported into Fedora Extras yet. 

yes, I tend to stay away from source installs in favour of rpm, unless 
essential. The FC NM rpm works more or less OK, so far I have resisted 
building my own, but maybe I will try this. Is the KDE frontend in an 
official release yet, or is it planned for a particular future release.

> To store the WEP keys, you likely need 
> to run the gnome-keyring at the start of your KDE session.  There is
> some KDE facility to auto-launch stuff when you log in, add these two
> programs to it:
>
> /usr/libexec/gnome-settings-daemon
> /usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon


thanks for the tip. I'll try this next time I'm in a WEP/WPA area.

cheers Chris
>
> Dan

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