Re: Connecting as first node on mesh

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Tue, 2016-04-05 at 15:22 -0400, Stuart Gathman wrote:
> I have been playing with making mesh connections friendly in NM. 
> Joining a wifi mesh works well - the SSID shows up, and you can click
> on
> it or have it auto-connect.  The network is configured as ad-hoc, no
> IP4, noIP6, and I created a dispatcher script that sets up BATMAN-ADV
> when a mesh connects. 
>
> The problem is when no other nodes are up yet.  For instance, this
> happens every time I lead a meetup on mesh networking.  I am the
> first
> one there!  I can use nmcli to connect, but it does not show in the
> GUI
> to connect by clicking.  I can understand why only visible SSIDs
> would
> show in the GUI normally.  Is there a property I missed to make the
> ad-hoc network show up even when no currently visible?  Someone has
> got
> to be first.  This is kind of in-between managed client, and ap
> mode. 

At the moment there's no way to do that in the menu, since the menu
only lists networks that are visible in a scan.  It would be possible
to always show AP-mode and Ad-Hoc network connections in the menu;
currently they are listed under the "Connect to other..." or "Create
new..." options which may not be as discoverable.  The downside is that
depending on how many adhoc networks you've connected to, the menu can
get quite long.

Would you have time to look into that?  It's not too hard to change the
applet for this and we can give some pointers.  For other desktops
(GNOME Shell, KDE) those specific GUI clients would have to be modified
separately.

Dan