Re: A couple of minor issues with NM

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Sat, 2006-12-23 at 03:38 +0000, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> On Saturday 23 December 2006 02:00, Darren Albers wrote:
> 
> > > I should say that I am using KDE rather than Gnome.
> > > It seems that NetworkManager leans fairly heavily towards Gnome.
> > > Maybe it is not a good choice for KDE users?
> >
> > Oops, I forgot that you are running KDE, I am not sure where
> > knetworkmanager stores the profiles.  I think there is a mailing list
> > devoted to this on kde.org or maybe a Knetworkmanager user here can
> > tell you.  I vaguely remember something about the KDE wallet?
> 
> Thanks for persisting with this.
> I'll see if I can find where knetworkmanager stores things,
> I guess somewhere in ~/.kde/share/config/ .
> 
> > > I'm afraid I do blame the Linux WiFi developers.
> > > For some reason the whole setup is in an appalling mess,
> > > with files all over the place, as I said.
> > > There is nothing wrong with the orinoco_cs driver;
> > > once I get connected it works perfectly.
> >
> > This is off topic for this list but I still have no idea what this:
> > "with files all over the place" means.... On my system they are in the
> > location I expect them to be.
> 
> In the classic - non NM - setup
> there are files called ifcfg-eth0 in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/,
> in /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/
> and /etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/
> 
> On some of my machines these are hard-linked files
> (surely no-one uses hard links nowadays?)
> while on others they appear to be independent,
> and in fact differ from one another.
> 
> You mention files in ~/.gconf/
> and I have found other relevant files in /var/run/ and other places.
> 
> > > > Have you checked your systems logs to see if it reports why the
> > > > association is being stopped?
> > >
> > > Yes, repeatedly -
> > > when it doesn't work it says the delay was too long:
> > > ----------------------------------------------------------------
> > > (0002) Dec 23 00:44:43 martha NetworkManager: <information>    Activation
> > > (eth0) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) complete.
> > > Dec 23 00:44:51 martha NetworkManager: <information>    eth0: link timed
> > > out. Dec 23 00:45:03 martha NetworkManager: <information>    Activation
> > > (eth0/wireless): association took too long (>20s), faili
> > > ng activation.
> > > Dec 23 00:45:03 martha NetworkManager: <information>    Activation (eth0)
> > > failure scheduled...
> > > ----------------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> > > However, the next time I re-boot NM works fine,
> > > completing the whole operation in less than a second.
> >
> > But there is nothing to indicate why the connection suddenly fails?
> > What you are seeing there is it failing to associate but what causes
> > it to fail initially?
> 
> As far as I can see, the response is identical whether it succeeds or fails,
> up to the point where it either takes more than 20 seconds, and fails,
> or takes half a second, and succeeds.
> I have no idea why it sometimes goes one way, and sometimes the other.
> 
> In fact I find the complete unpredictability of NetworkManager 
> very off-putting - I never know what it is going to do.
> 
> > > > > Has anyone else had problems getting NM to accept a WEP key?
> > > >
> > > > No, but is it a hex or ascii key?   I just tried it on my system and I
> > > > was able to enter the passphrase and connect right away.
> > >
> > > What passphrase?
> > > I don't have any such phrase - just a network key (hex)
> > > which seems to work perfectly well in Windows.
> > > Actually, it works perfectly well in the usual WiFi setup in Linux,
> > > when entered as key=... in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 .
> >
> > Are you adding the 0x in front of the key?   I have also heard of some
> > people having problems when their AP is set to shared instead of open.
> 
> I didn't prefix the number with 0x,
> but I'm pretty sure it doesn't require that,
> as it checks that one has given 10 characters,
> before allowing one to try to connect.
> Also I said I was giving a hex key.

Is the key 10 or 26 characters?  Did you choose "WEP 64/128-bit Hex" as
the key option when you typed it in?

When using WEP, the timeout here is usually because the WEP key is wrong
or incorrectly entered.

Dan

> What exactly is the different between "shared" and "open"?
> I just have a key set on my access point,
> and I give that key on each machine accessing the AP.
> Is that shared or open?
> 
> Actually, I tried replying both "shared" and "open",
> but I didn't see any difference in the response.
>