Re: What does the NM Applet button do?

[Jirka Klimes <jklimes redhat com>]

On Friday 04 of June 2010 02:08:46 James K. Williams wrote:
> When you click left on the NetworkManager applet, there is a list of
> connections, and you must select one of the radio buttons there to get
> networking working. What exactly does selecting that radio button do?
> 
> Here's why I ask. I don't really need NM at all, because I can edit all the
> network configuration files by hand and then restart network services with
> 
> # services network restart
> 
> This should be enough to bring networking up, but it's not: I still have to
> select one of those radio buttons in the NM applet. To try to determine
> what pressing that button does, I have checked services before and after,
> and there is no difference. Also, I have checked the config files before
> and after, and they are not changed. So what happens under the hood when I
> select one of the buttons in the applet? Why doesn't networking come back
> on until I press it?
> 
> I'm using NetworkManager 0.7.1 on Fedora 9.
> 
> Thanks.

There are two services to manage networks:
network - legacy service used on Fedora
NetworkManager - meant to replace network service

You want probably use just one of them.

So to use 'network' service, stop NetworkManager: service NetworkManager stop
and disable it not to be run any more: chkconfig NetworkManager off
Then you can manually configure ifcfg- files and do ifup/ifdown.

NM applet is a client for NetworkManager daemon. When you click an item in NM 
applet, it communicates with NetworkManager daemon via D-Bus to activate the 
network connection.

Jirka