Problem with Network Manager

[Derek Broughton]

Miles Lane wrote:

> On 9/30/06, Peter Garrett <peter.garrett at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
>> On Sat, 30 Sep 2006 14:07:22 +0200
>> "Ben Edwards (lists)" <lists at videonetwork.org> wrote:
>>
>> > Been trying to get network manager working.  I have the applet but when
>> > I click on it it only shows wired network, and this is only if I start
>> > eth0 manually.  Currently I have eth0 and ra0 in my interfaces file
>> > (neither with auto).  I have also started er0 and it does not show up.
>>
>> Network Manager doesn't play nice with /etc/network/interfaces :)
>> You need to comment out all interfaces in that file except for the "lo"
>> stanza which normally looks like
>>
>> #loopback
>> auto lo
>> iface lo inet loopback

Recently I've seen a couple of notes on the Network-manager list that it
_should_ work as long as other interfaces have no options other
than "dhcp" - but that hasn't worked for me, so I'd stick to this really
simple version.
>> >
>> > The applet I have had no drop down;(
>>
>> Probably because your interfaces file is confusing Network Manager,
>> although I might be wrong...

Yes.

>> Things I discovered the hard way:
>>
>> 1) Make sure that your card supports/ will work with wpasupplicant if you
>> are using the latest Network Manager and nm-applet packages

Yes.  wpasupplicant has been a real bugbear for me.
>>
>> 2) You can sometimes persuade N-M to behave by running
>>
>> sudo /etc/init.d/dbus restart

And if you change anything (like removing your interface
from /etc/network/interfaces) you _must_ restart the NM daemon by
restarting dbus.
>>
>> then starting nm-applet

Shouldn't have to restart nm-applet (I use knetworkmanager which certainly
picks up any new settings once dbus is restarted).

>> 4) If N-M has one of its periodic attacks of amnesia, sometimes clicking
>> the drop down ( left click on applet) and selecting the alternative
>> interface  will convince it to remember that wireless is present ( or
>> wired, if that is connected)

I haven't seen this problem.

>> 5) There's a fair bit of useful stuff on
>>
>> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/NetworkManager
>>
>> 6) Try to keep a sense of humour. Network Manager seems to be very much a
>> work in progress ;-)

It is.  It's _mostly_ ready for primetime - now that my wireless interface
seems to be working again, I'll be using it fulltime, but for a month it's
been flaky.
>>
>> When it works, it's very nice. It's a bit temperamental at times, it
>> seems...
 
Agreed.  btw, the whole /etc/network/interfaces business is apparently
something debian or ubuntu introduced.  The vanilla upstream NM doesn't
care, but somebody wanted a way to force NM to ignore certain interfaces.
-- 
derek