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alinefr Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 05 Jul 2009 Posts: 113 Location: São Paulo, Brasil
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Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2017 10:37 pm Post subject: Managing wifi networks in 2017 same as 6 or more years ago |
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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 Advocate
Joined: 02 Mar 2008 Posts: 3664
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alinefr Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 05 Jul 2009 Posts: 113 Location: São Paulo, Brasil
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Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2017 3:49 pm Post subject: |
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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 Apprentice
Joined: 08 Jan 2010 Posts: 171
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Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 9:26 am Post subject: |
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dhcpcd is ace. |
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steveL Watchman
Joined: 13 Sep 2006 Posts: 5153 Location: The Peanut Gallery
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Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2017 8:49 pm Post subject: |
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Yup, dhcpcd++ UberLord++ |
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miket Guru
Joined: 28 Apr 2007 Posts: 485 Location: Gainesville, FL, USA
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 7:21 am Post subject: |
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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 Advocate
Joined: 02 Mar 2008 Posts: 3664
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 8:16 am Post subject: |
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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 Apprentice
Joined: 08 Jan 2010 Posts: 171
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 9:02 am Post subject: |
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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 Watchman
Joined: 13 Sep 2006 Posts: 5153 Location: The Peanut Gallery
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 11:23 pm Post subject: |
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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 Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 17 Oct 2013 Posts: 130 Location: Watertown, MA
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Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 6:03 pm Post subject: |
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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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