Re: NM serious usablity challenges

[Jirka Klimes <jklimes redhat com>]

On Saturday 24 of March 2012 23:24:14 Robert Moskowitz wrote:
> F16, Gnome3.
> 
> I am at a friend's house in Amsterdam trying to get connect to his
> wireless and it is failing, so this message SHOULD go out when I get to
> the KLM lounge tommorrow (that was working friday)...
> 
> A major defiency is the loss of deleting SSID configurations.  There is
> no 'delete' feature anymore in the Network Settings panel.
> 
> There is a network near here that has the same SSID as at another
> friends (let's call it NETGEAR), but this one has a different password
> that I do not know.  Doesn't matter, NM keeps trying to connect and asks
> me for a different password when it fails. I have no way (or found no
> way), to delete or even deactivate this SSID from NM.  So it keeps
> trying and trying.
> 
You can delete the stored connection via nm-connection-editor (start from 
terminal or GnomeShell Applications->Other->Network Connections
(also look at https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/184/network-connections-
shortcut/)

or use command-line:
nmcli con delete id "name_of_the_connectio_you_want_remove"

> Connection to my friend's wireless SEEMs to be a DHCP problem.  I have
> this hunch by watching /var/log/messages; this 'new' network manager
> does not tell me why it is failing.  Now I shoud preface the next part
> with I work in 802.11 standards.  Right now I am active in 802.11ai
> (FIA), so I KNOW the .11 state machine.  Is the problem in initial
> connection (AUTH,ASSOC); note it is possible to be receiving BEACONs,
> but be too far to actually ASSOCIATE with an AP.  The user should be
> told the problem is here.  Or is it a bad password; well that is the
> guess when it presents the dialog for the password but i KNOW the
> password is correct.  Oh, perhaps the problem is DHCPv4 (or v6?) and
> since there is no way to tell the user to fix the DHCP allocation in the
> router, the poor user gets asked to try a different password?
> 
> You KNOW what the failure is.  PLEASE give some information as to which
> step things stop at.  Plus change the icon from that strange ... thing
> to something showing trying and trying what?  (ASSOC, SECURE, ADDRESS).
> Also be so informed that when 11ai gets done (you do have 2 years) we
> are going to do all this in a couple/few roundtrips.  My proposal does
> the whole shabang in 2.  The AUTH starts the securing and the ASSOC
> finishes the securing and does the addressing, though there are times
> where addressing extends the ASSOC for another roundtrip.
> 
> Now back to feature loss over Gnome2 NM....
Please attach /var/log/messages, it will indicate wher the problem lies.
If actual connection to AP is the issue, wpa_supplicant logs are interested, 
because wpa_supplicant is the program that does the actual 802.11 association.

And btw, the gnome thing (I mean javascript network indicator) is just
a client to NetworkManager daemon.

> 
> I cannot turn off wireless from the NM pulldown if it is currently
> trying (and really failing) to connect.  I have to open the Network
> Settings dialog and turn off wireless there.  While attempting to
> connect the on/off switch is replaced with the text 'connecting'.  I
> know that, I want to stop it trying to connect, and the only way to do
> that is turn the wireless off.
> 
Yeah, the removing on/off button is the deficiency of the new gnome-shell 
network indicator.

> Does turning NM off turn off the wireless radio?  I have a Lenovo x120
> and it does not have a wireless radio switch and on airplanes, I like to
> turn off my radio and save  battery.   All I can do is turn off NM, but
> I have no way of knowing WHAT is being turned off!
> 
It should switch off radio, as it deals with rfkill subsystem.
NM-wise you can enable disable wifi via command line:
nmcli nm wifi
nmcli nm wifi on
nmcli nm wifi off

To query rfkill state, use 'rfkill list'

Jirka