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alinefr
Tux's lil' helper
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Joined: 05 Jul 2009
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Location: São Paulo, Brasil

PostPosted: Sun Feb 05, 2017 10:37 pm    Post subject: Managing wifi networks in 2017 same as 6 or more years ago Reply with quote

Years ago, I did move to Gentoo from Arch Linux, and one of those things that bothered me was choosing a simple network manager. In Arch I was running one cli app, I don't remember its name, not even if it still exist as systemd has changed a lot there. When on Gentoo I gave a try to NetworkManager/nm-applet but I found that would be too much for a simple wifi chooser. Then I've started to use Wicd. I think it does his work.

So, after years, and after a couple of laptop changes I'm having some unexpected wifi disconnects. Maybe it is a kernel drive issue. I don't know, but I though I could give a try to NetworkManager. It seems to be the standard way most people do to connect to wifi in Linux nowadays. So cool. Following the Gentoo wiki, disabled all network stuff, disabled Wicd, enabled NetworkManager, installed nm-applet. Good. But not much. It could not connect to my wifi. Of course, I'm changing tools so some things may work a little bit different, and I started to debug it. But every time nm-applet tries to connect to my wifi link it looses all the wifi list, including my one. So how do I refresh it? It seems there is no way! No "iwlist wlan0 scanning"! Rebooting seems to be the way. This was too much to me. Back to Wicd. Oh, it can't connect! WTH? NetworkManager or dhcp (why it does not work with the good'old dhcpcd?) created a symlink to /etc/resolv.conf from somewhere over /run...

2017, after a lot of those years NetworkManager is the same crap as always. I'm pretty sure it should work out of the box for the average Gnome or KDE user, but not the best tool for those who want to have full control of their systems. Wicd latest release is from january 2016, it has the same ugly interface, but it helps me to do just what I want: give me a list of wifi available connection. And it even has a refresh button!!
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charles17
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 06, 2017 8:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Why not try ( see topic 965190 ) https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Network_management_using_DHCPCD?
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alinefr
Tux's lil' helper
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Joined: 05 Jul 2009
Posts: 113
Location: São Paulo, Brasil

PostPosted: Mon Feb 06, 2017 3:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

charles17 wrote:
Why not try ( see topic 965190 ) https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Network_management_using_DHCPCD?


I didn't knew dhcpcd could act by itself as a network manager. It was not so hard to configure and dhcpcd-ui did what I wanted: a wifi list scan. And surprisingly, when on wired it keeps both connections alive: wired and wireless. Thank you!
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greyspoke
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 9:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

dhcpcd is ace.
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steveL
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 8:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yup, dhcpcd++ UberLord++
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miket
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 7:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Color me impressed. Wicd works most of the time. Sometimes it surprises me when it actually remember to connect to wired networks after having connected to a different network (as it did for me twice today). Sometimes it just gives up altogether. I've been dreading what to do about KDE. Should I keep the KDE-4 ebuilds in my overlay, or should I go with the still-not-quite-right plasma 5? Should I go with a Qt-using substitute like Lumina or LXQt that work happily with Qt 5?

Now comes Uberlord with capabilities in dhcpcd of which I never imaged: wireless management (including, I suppose, a supplicant) and a GUI. I'd want to give it a try at least--especially considering who the author is. Unless there is some kind of Qt-4 translation layer in Qt 5, it would seem I have a big argument here for sticking with KDE 4.

I see that Roy has given up on his superkid avatar (or whatever it was supposed to be). He does seem to be quite active with dhcpcd.

Any idea of whether he might want to get reacquainted with a certain child of his we know and love?

By the way, Steve, it's sure great to see you back!
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charles17
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 8:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

miket wrote:
Unless there is some kind of Qt-4 translation layer in Qt 5, it would seem I have a big argument here for sticking with KDE 4.
There shouldn't be any conflicts between Qt 5 and dhcpcd-ui still using qt4.
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greyspoke
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 9:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

miket wrote:
Color me impressed. Wicd works most of the time. Sometimes it surprises me when it actually remember to connect to wired networks after having connected to a different network (as it did for me twice today). Sometimes it just gives up altogether. I've been dreading what to do about KDE. Should I keep the KDE-4 ebuilds in my overlay, or should I go with the still-not-quite-right plasma 5? Should I go with a Qt-using substitute like Lumina or LXQt that work happily with Qt 5?

Now comes Uberlord with capabilities in dhcpcd of which I never imaged: wireless management (including, I suppose, a supplicant) and a GUI. I'd want to give it a try at least--especially considering who the author is. Unless there is some kind of Qt-4 translation layer in Qt 5, it would seem I have a big argument here for sticking with KDE 4.

I see that Roy has given up on his superkid avatar (or whatever it was supposed to be). He does seem to be quite active with dhcpcd.

Any idea of whether he might want to get reacquainted with a certain child of his we know and love?

By the way, Steve, it's sure great to see you back!

dhcpcd uses wpa_supplicant for supplicating (so you need it installed, but don't run it as a service). But it also handles wired connections simply - in fact I use it on a machine that has a wired interface and no wireless card. It looks around for network interfaces and when it finds one, sets it up and gets you an IP address. If you only have one interface on your machine, it happens "just like that".
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steveL
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 11:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

miket wrote:
By the way, Steve, it's sure great to see you back!

Thanks man, good to see you (and the usual suspects..;) again too :-)
Quote:
I've been dreading what to do about KDE. Should I keep the KDE-4 ebuilds in my overlay, or should I go with the still-not-quite-right plasma 5? Should I go with a Qt-using substitute like Lumina or LXQt that work happily with Qt 5?

Now comes Uberlord with capabilities in dhcpcd of which I never imaged: wireless management (including, I suppose, a supplicant) and a GUI. I'd want to give it a try at least--especially considering who the author is. Unless there is some kind of Qt-4 translation layer in Qt 5, it would seem I have a big argument here for sticking with KDE 4.

I'm pretty sure Qt4 and Qt5 can live on the same machine (no idea why KDE has regressed in that sense.)

I feel your pain wrt KF5, but have no overlay to offer, yet.
I think I'll end up trying plasma5 in a chroot/alt-install, purely to try out new kate work that I've seen happen in the last few years. Now that asturm has confirmed running without semantic-craptop is supported, and upstream no less, it's worth bug-testing, but not switching production yet (for me, at least.)
Quote:
I see that Roy has given up on his superkid avatar (or whatever it was supposed to be). He does seem to be quite active with dhcpcd.

Any idea of whether he might want to get reacquainted with a certain child of his we know and love?

Nah, he's not interested in working on openrc anymore, I'm afraid (I asked him a few times up til a coupla years ago.)
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Atmmac
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Joined: 17 Oct 2013
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Location: Watertown, MA

PostPosted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 6:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sounds like a driver issue. I am using networkmanager with no issues. I had some issues with some BCM drivers in the past which give me similar symptoms to what you are experiencing.
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