DapperNetworkManager

Revision 70 as of 2006-03-28 21:28:06

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Status

Dapper Network Manager

NetworkManager aims for Network Connectivity which "Just Works". The computer should use the wired network connection when its plugged in, but automatically switch to a wireless connection when the user unplugs it and walks away from the desk. Likewise, when the user plugs the computer back in, the computer should switch back to the wired connection. The user should, most times, not even notice that their connection has has been managed for them; they should simply see uninterrupted network connectivity.

NetworkManager that "has the chance" of being integrated into Dapper will feature support for WPA and 802.1x as well. We will also provide l-r-m packages with updated wifi drivers.

There is GNOME network-manager-gnome (old nm-applet) and KDE ([:KNetworkmanager:knetworkmanager]) front-end that runs in sys tray and provides control over NetworkManager.

More information about NetworkManager is available [http://www.gnome.org/projects/NetworkManager/ here]. You can also check [http://live.gnome.org/NetworkManagerHardware list of supported hardware].

NetworkManager is beta software.

Installation

NOTE: NetworkManager 0.6.1 has been included into official repositories - see [https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/dapper-changes/2006-March/008171.html report].

Thanks to everybody involved. You will be able to remove our test repository from your list.

  • in main repo.

Note: If you are running Kubuntu/KDE, then you should be installing [:DapperKNetworkmanager:KNetworkManager].

The repository contains the following packages:

  • network-manager, netwok-manager-gnome (by us)

  • libnl, a dependency of n-m 0.6 (by TomParker)

  • libnl-dev (patched by us and the [:DapperKNetworkmanager] maintainers)

  • wpasupplicant 0.4 with the required feature for n-m backported from 0.5 (by ReinhardTartler)

And also:

Notes

NOTE: if you are using NM from official Ubuntu repository, please report your bugs into [https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+filebug Malone]. Official version of NM is also discussed in forums in [http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=856744 this thread].

NetworkManager doesn't manage interfaces with manual configuration defined in /etc/network/interfaces. To get n-m to manage all the interfaces properly, backup /etc/network/interfaces and remove all wired/wireless interfaces that you want to be managed by n-m (if you want to leave full control to NM just leave the lines concerning the lo and maybe ppp and tun interfaces). You can leave your wired/wireless interfaces only if they are set to auto and dhcp (and no other options!) - the only allowed config for NM is the following two lines (replace eth1 with your interface): 

  •   auto eth1
  iface eth1 inet dhcp

WPA users: you need to set "ENABLED=0" in /etc/default/wpasupplicant and ensure than wpasupplicant is not running. NM will take care for controlling wpasupplicant.

Discussion about these packages is also going on in this [http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=147249 forum thread]. There is also older [http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=145230 thread].where you may find useful info.

If it does not work for you, you may get more info from messages reported by NM processes - see this [http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=843493&postcount=31 forum post] for instructions.

Issues

n-m & driver issues

nm-applet issues

cosmectic issues

Comments

Please do not edit this page directly, place your comments here. Thanks.

  • Please consider this patch (http://mail.gnome.org/archives/networkmanager-list/2006-January/msg00141.html) to NM to get the best functionality from madwifi seeing as the madwifi project are hesitant to change anything. Robert Love is including it to Redhat/Fedora (I believe) and Dan refuses to commit it to upstream (fair enough).

  • The sources.list information is wrong, I get a 404.
    • I do too, but this is because I have an amd64 and they don't have these packages yet.

  • When NetworkManger runs I'm hit by this bug: [https://launchpad.net/distros/debian/+source/iproute/+bug/16137 #16137]. After killing the 'ip route' process NM works fine though. BTW, where should we report problems about these packages?

    • you can always report problems to "mario dot danic at gmail dot com" regarding N-M
      • and it's gnome applet. For KNetworkManager, please contact maintainers.
  • It seems that the packagess were updated (names changed and all). Next time please try to also update the version number. Thanks.
    • this is intentional - first version that will be included in Dapper should be ubuntu1
  • Apparently NM conflicts with manual configuration of network interfaces, it resets changes in the networking configuration panel on Flight 5.
    • known ... see notes.
      • yes, but it should not happen, it is a show stopper for first time users
        • we'll try to make it play more nicely with current interfaces, but complete
          • compatibility is a no-no
  • here, nm-applet (the GNOME one) has 6 instances running in the systray after startup; maybe it is XFCE-specific and I don't care much since the number doesn't grow. It autostarts from /etc/xdg/autostart/nm-applet.desktop, there are no BM desktop files in /usr/share/autostart, neither in ~/.conig/autostart.
  • NM is trying to run /usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant (says in --no-daemon in console), which fails with ENOENT, should be /sbin/wpa_supplicant. Making symlink resolves this. Should be fixed. (wpasupplicant=0.4.8-0ubuntu1, network-manager=0.6.1-0ubuntu1).