Re: Understanding How Networking Manager Manages Wi-Fi

[Ramprasad Vempati <ramprasad vempati gmail com>]

Thanks Dan for quick reply. Could you also let me know is this
interaction to wpa_supplicant is controlled by some config file or is
it embedded with-in binary?

And can I configure Network Manager not to manage any of Wi-Fi
Networks but just Wired networks?  If yes, can you help me how can I
do that?

And in that case I'm assuming Network Manager won't even start wpa_supplicant.


On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 8:33 PM, Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2015-09-22 at 19:54 +0530, Ramprasad Vempati wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm interested to understand the flow, in terms of how Network-Manager
> > controls Wi-Fi. As far as I know Network Manager talks to
> > wpa_supplicant.
>
> Yes, through the D-Bus IPC protocol, which many services on Linux use.
>
> > But I'm interested in more details. Like how Network-manager starts
> > wpa_supplicant?
>
> Through D-Bus service activation.  Even if the supplicant is not yet
> started, NM asks the supplicant a question, and the D-Bus daemon will
> hold the request, start the supplicant, and pass the request along when
> it's ready.
>
> > And another case I would like to understand is, if I kill
> > wpa_supplicant that's started by Network-Manager and also remove
> > wpa_supplicant from /sbin, but run wpa_supplicant from another folder,
> > does Network-manager finds him & tries to control?
>
> Yes, as long as you've built the supplicant with the D-Bus control
> interface enabled (CONFIG_CTRL_IFACE_DBUS_NEW), and you've started the
> supplicant with the "-u" option to enable it at runtime.
>
> Dan
>
> > I tried google to get this information. But I couldn't find any useful
> > information.
> >
> > Can one of you help?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Ram
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