hey Dan, thanks for the quick reply, you're certainly faster than the guys in IRC ^^ anyways, let me try and be more explicit On 08/10/2012 11:02 PM, Dan Williams wrote: > On Fri, 2012-08-10 at 19:42 +0200, igel wrote: >> hey everyone, >> is this the right mailing list for support questions regarding >> networkmanager? I'll just assume this for now :] >> >> So I gave networkmanager a shot and am kinda stuck with my wireless. I >> can't get nm-applet to display the networks in range, even when started >> as root. Maybe I misunderstood the usage of nm-applet but I though it >> would display the available wireless networks on right clicking. I'll >> attach a jpg with what right-clicking the nm-applet produces. >> >> Currently, I have version 0.8.4 of both networkmanager and nm-applet >> installed. Oh and, in case this is any good: my wired interface works >> with nm (meaning that nm connects if I plug in ethernet (with dhcp)) > > Only the NM daemon needs to be run as root, to get access to kernel wifi > APIs. nm-applet should be run as whatever user you're logged in as, and > communicates with the main NM daemon via the D-Bus IPC protocol. I am aware of that, however, I in the spirit of debugging my wifi problem, I wanted to not mix permission problems with nm/wifi problems. Hence, I started the applet as root thinking that polkit/dbus/ck would allow anything issued from a program called as root. > If you're having problems with wifi, a few questions to narrow it down: > > 1) does the applet show your wifi device at all, but no networks? or > does it not even show your wifi? If the wifi device isn't shown at all, > the contents of /var/log/messages, /var/log/daemon.log, > or /var/log/NetworkManager.log (depending on your distro) are helpful to > figure out what's going on. I don't quite understand where it should show my wifi device - The only place where it does show up is in the "Network Connections" dialog, under "wireless" (I'll attach a snapshot again) called "System (wlan0)". I do not have a "/var/log/NetworkManager.log", does nm use the syslog facilities? Then it should show up in /var/log/messages (my syslog-ng is configured to dump everything there); However, a # grep wlan0 /var/log/messages revealed Aug 13 10:39:44 localhost NetworkManager[3797]: SCPlugin-Ifnet: wireless_setting added for wlan0 Aug 13 10:39:44 localhost NetworkManager[3797]: SCPlugin-Ifnet: Using dhcp method for wlan0 Aug 13 10:39:44 localhost NetworkManager[3797]: SCPlugin-Ifnet: Connection verified wlan0:1 Aug 13 10:39:44 localhost NetworkManager[3797]: <info> (wlan0): driver supports SSID scans (scan_capa 0x01). Aug 13 10:39:44 localhost NetworkManager[3797]: <info> (wlan0): new 802.11 WiFi device (driver: 'ath9k' ifindex: 4) Aug 13 10:39:44 localhost NetworkManager[3797]: <info> (wlan0): exported as /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/0 Aug 13 10:39:44 localhost NetworkManager[3797]: <info> (wlan0): now managed Aug 13 10:39:44 localhost NetworkManager[3797]: <info> (wlan0): device state change: 1 -> 2 (reason 2) Aug 13 10:39:44 localhost NetworkManager[3797]: <info> (wlan0): preparing device. Aug 13 10:39:44 localhost NetworkManager[3797]: <info> (wlan0): deactivating device (reason: 2). Aug 13 10:39:44 localhost dhcpcd[2837]: wlan0: removing interface Aug 13 10:39:44 localhost NetworkManager[3797]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant manager state: down -> idle Aug 13 10:39:44 localhost NetworkManager[3797]: <info> (wlan0): device state change: 2 -> 3 (reason 0) Aug 13 10:39:44 localhost NetworkManager[3797]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: starting -> ready So I take it nm is aware of my wifi device! > > 2) what distro? If you're using Debian or Ubuntu, what's in > your /etc/network/interfaces file? NM is sometimes told to ignore > interfaces that are listed in there, to ensure that when it's installed > it doesn't unexpectedly change your network config. My system runs gentoo linux x64, kernel is # uname -a Linux <hostname> 3.4.4-gentoo #5 SMP PREEMPT Thu Jul 12 14:59:41 CEST 2012 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T5900 @ 2.20GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux But I seriously doubt that the gentoo guys would default-configure nm to ignore some device without telling me in the ebuild. Also, nm wouldn't fiddle with wlan0 the way it does (see /var/log/messages above) if it was told to ignore it, right? > > 3) what kernel version and wifi hardware do you have? Many drivers that > are not stable upstream kernel wifi drivers (ie, anything direct from a > vendor or in the 'staging' kernel drivers) often don't conform to the > standard kernel APIs, and often have small bugs that prevent them from > working smoothly; they simply don't get as much attention as the > standard drivers. Sometimes a simple fix makes them work, or switching > to a standard kernel driver makes things better. kernel version is 3.4.4 with some gentoo patches, nothing serious concerning wifi I guess. As seen in the above /var/log/messages snip my wireless driver is ath9k which works just fine in say wicd (and no, I did not run both wicd and nm deamons at the same time when conducting experiments). > > Dan > > Thanks again for taking interest in the matter! greets -igel
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