Re: PATCH: prevent repeated reconnections with some chipsets

[Mark Stosberg <mark summersault com>]

On Sun, 2007-04-01 at 08:30 +0200, Grant Williamson wrote:
> Seen this issue, reworked the patch last night for 0.6.5. I think its 
> complete. Will test this week.

Thanks Grant, 

This will be an improvement.  

I'm hoping the patch can be further refined to "just work" for people. 

As a recap, this patch allows a timeout value of 8 seconds to be changed
by nm-tool. This means for a change to actually happen, each user has to
create a simple script in the right location, like this:

In /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/set-timeout

Add:

exec /home/mark/Desktop/network-manager-0.6.3/test/nm-tool --set-timeout
20000

This increases the timeout value to 20,000. This reveals another
complication: "nm-tool" is not installed in the Ubuntu package. (That's
a packaging issue with them, I realize). 

Still, I just helped a middle aged farmer and college track athlete to
both get set up with Linux laptops with these wireless cards. I'd like
to be able to tell them it will "Just Work", not that they need to fuss
with files in "/etc". 

I see a few alternatives:

1. Change the value from 8 seconds to 20 seconds for everyone. That's
unattractive if means that a lot of people will be waiting an extra 12
seconds needlessly. 

2. Maintain a list of cards that need this change, and dynamically
change the value for those cards. That sounds like a big maintenance
headache, and would be difficult to keep current, I imagine. 

3. If there is active, working wireless connection in use, don't keep
scanning for others, but wait for the user to click the applet to scan
(This addresses the core issue). 

4. Check /why/ we are timing out after 8 seconds. Is it because the card
is busy scanning still? Then wait for at least 20 seconds before
starting a reconnect. 

Thanks again. 

  Mark
    
> > The details are all in this bug report, including a link the Ubuntu bug
> > report, which has the patch.
> > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=418065