Re: "Wireless disabled in software"

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Mon, 2011-09-19 at 21:23 +0200, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> Jirka Klimes wrote:
> 
> > /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state state is not meant to be
> > changed by users directly.
> > It's used internally by NM to store user configuration of wireless
> > enable/disable state, so that it is persistant. I.e. when user right-click
> > nm- applet and unchecks "Enable wireless" and then reboots, wireless
> > should stay disabled.
> 
> In my case, WiFi was enabled ("iwlist scan" saw my AP),
> but /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state 
> said NetworkingEnabled=false

That would indicate that networking is not enabled, which can be changed
by right-clicking on the NM applet and checking "Enable Networking".  By
default networking is enabled, so we'd also have to look at how your
machine got into this situation.

> >> Also, could NM please stop saying "reason: 2";
> >> if the reason is know why not tell us what it is!!
> > 
> > The reason codes are mainly meant for debugging and can be found at
> > 
> http://cgit.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/tree/include/NetworkManager.h?id=e30287aa84c30454b97f630d86029cdd68086ead#n276
> 
> I take it you mean debugging by developers.
> Please remember, there are a few users as well!

Right, but I'd only expect more experienced users to check out the logs;
clearly we can always improve our error reporting, but in this case it's
not so much error reporting as somehow more obviously representing
network state.  Which probably can't easily be done in the current
menu-based applet.  What would be more awesome is, if you see networking
being disabled, something to click to offer to turn it back on for you.
That kind of thing.

Dan

> Personally, I only read a syslog if something has gone wrong,
> or is not working as expected.
> So I'm grateful for error or warning messages that give me a hint.
> 
> I'm afraid NM gives me far too much information -
> on a normal day nearly half my /var/log/messages 
> is taken up with messages from NM,
> the vast majority of which are no use to me -
> basically, if everything has gone as expected
> I don't feel I need to know.
>