Re: Release: 0.7.1

[Osma Ahvenlampi <oa iki fi>]

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 6:12 PM, Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com> wrote:
> If people have suggestions of small fixes they really want to see in
> 0.7.2 ("3G signal strength" is not appropriate, but "don't ask for wifi
> password so often" certianly is) we'd love to hear them.

Congrats on the release! I've been a happy Fedora/NM user for ages
already, and it keeps getting better. Another "small fix" (that probably
isn't that small) for your consideration:

I regularly use WLAN networks that have these annoying tendencies of
requiring a web-based authentication after connecting, but before any
other use of the network works. Sometimes these are open networks that
require me to click an "OK, I still understand there are no guarantees
for this network" button, sometimes it requires a password or (horrors!)
a time-token purchase.

NetworkManager state updates + D-Bus state notifications to smart
applications is a wonderful improvement to the bad-old-days of having to
manually reactivate connections every time my laptop resumes. However,
in the case of these networks, it means I have to manually abort their
first connection attempt and reconnect (case: Evolution IMAP
connections), or worse, override their complaints of "man-in-the-middle"
cerficate alerts when their HTTPS auths to back-end services were
intercepted (case: Pidgin's Facebook and Twitter protocol plugins).

It would be nice if I could mark a WLAN SSID as a "stupid web-auth
network" in which case NetworkManager did not update the network state
to connected before I tell it that I've authenticated.

It would be nicer still if I could automate the authentication (at least
when it's of the "click OK" style) with a small dispatcher "up" script.
I tried this, but it seemed that NM sends the connection state D-Bus
update before it runs the scripts, so they can't do what they need to do
before all other apps have already tried to reconnect to their
respective services.

Thanks again for an already-great tool that has made my daily life much
more hassle-free.

//osma