Re: Understanding How Networking Manager Manages Wi-Fi

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Wed, 2015-09-23 at 23:24 +0530, Ramprasad Vempati wrote:
> Thanks Dan. Looks like "unmanaged-devices" works for me. But can I
> give wildcard mac-address? I mean can I say something like :
> 00:11:22:XX:XX:XX?

It's been progressively expanded with newer versions of NM; look at 'man
NetworkManager.conf' for details on what your NM version supports.  I
don't think you can do partially wildcarded MAC addresses, but you can
do stuff like:


> On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 12:29 AM, Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2015-09-22 at 23:41 +0530, Ramprasad Vempati wrote:
> > > 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?
> >
> > NM generates the supplicant configuration from its own internal
> > configuration, which is stored in /etc in various places depending on
> > your distro.
> >
> > > 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?
> >
> > You can tell NM to ignore any interface through its configuration file,
> > by setting "unmanaged-devices" (see man NetworkManager.conf) or by
> > tagging all wifi devices with a udev rule to tell NM to ignore them.
> >
> > Dan
> >
> > > 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
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > networkmanager-list mailing list
> > > > > networkmanager-list gnome org
> > > > > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list