the new Gnome netapplet

Message

credo · Post by **credo** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 12:55 pm

Sorry furgus, but Im not too sure what changed

I did not switch to the new build, but i did move my pc to a new location. Here, I have a WEP-enabled wireless connection. At home, I have a 100mbit ethernet connection.

Sorry I couldnt be of more help

pangloss · Post by **pangloss** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 8:18 pm

fergus:

Code: Select all

$ cat /proc/net/dev
Inter-|   Receive                                                |  Transmit
 face |bytes    packets errs drop fifo frame compressed multicast|bytes    packets errs drop fifo colls carrier compressed
    lo:  647296    6205    0    0    0     0          0         0   647296    6205    0    0    0     0       0          0
  eth0:       0       0    0    0    0     0          0         0        0       0    0    0    0     0       0          0
  eth1: 6895800   15840    0  601    0     0          0         0  1196166   11016    0    0    0     0       0          0

Code: Select all

$ ls -l /etc/init.d/net.*
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root     6 Dec 22 03:18 /etc/init.d/net.eth0 -> net.lo
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root root     6 Dec 22 03:35 /etc/init.d/net.eth1 -> net.lo
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 24016 Dec 22 03:18 /etc/init.d/net.lo
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root  4414 Jan 10 14:45 /etc/init.d/net.ppp0

thanks!

southsider · Post by **southsider** » Tue Jan 11, 2005 10:54 pm

How does this work? Do the network drivers trigger hotplug events?

fergus · Post by **fergus** » Wed Jan 12, 2005 1:37 am

pangloss,

hmm... it looks like everything should be in order for the interfaces to get listed... i'll try and whip up a patch that should print out more debug info but in the meantime try this.

shutdown both the applet and the daemon and then run them from terminals so you can see the messages get sent back and forth. make sure to run the daemon with the --no-daemon flag to stay in the foreground. post the first 10 or so messages from each and i'll see if there is anything else funky going on...

--
fergus

pangloss · Post by **pangloss** » Fri Jan 14, 2005 11:23 pm

*hangs head in shame*

I discovered netdaemon wasn't running all this time. I didn't think to check since it used to get called from /etc/conf.d/local.start. For whatever reason, it wasn't starting up on boot anymore.

As I recall, netapplet used to complain when netdaemon wasn't running instead of this silent behavior, which is why I didn't think to check netdaemon sooner.

Sorry for the false alarm!

I did notice that the icon seems to have changed? Looks smaller and poorly anti-aliased (blurry). The icon in the menu (once you click) looks the same as before.

fergus · Post by **fergus** » Sat Jan 15, 2005 12:22 pm

pangloss,

looking back, it looks more like you had an old daemon running that was feeding back the wrong info. If you try and start netapplet with no daemon you still do receive and error.

As for the icon, one of the differences between netapplet .98 and 1.00 was the addition of icon scaling code to match the size of the panel it is on.

Glad you got it working....

--
fergus

Xamindar · Post by **Xamindar** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 8:17 am

I'd like to follow this thread but it is already pretty long....Can someone sumarise what works the best? That netapplet or networkmanager? Are any of these type of things in portage yet or is it just custom ebuilds so far?

Thanks

rabbit · Post by **rabbit** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 7:29 pm

Everything so far is all custom ebuilds.

I've found that netapplet is more complete, and works very reliably for me. NetworkManager has other goals besides being a simple network applet, and that's slowed some of its development, I think.

netapplet would be in portage, except that so far it has taken forever for the new baselayout to be unmasked in portage. Once this happens, it *should* (big emphasis on should) be accepted upstream.

Many kudos to fergus for taking up the call after I stopped being active on it.

aethyr · Post by **aethyr** » Tue Feb 01, 2005 7:47 pm

rabbit wrote:I've found that netapplet is more complete, and works very reliably for me. NetworkManager has other goals besides being a simple network applet, and that's slowed some of its development, I think.

Looking at the mailing list would reveal that networkmanager is undergoing lots of development, it's just that the development is occuring in CVS (i.e. there haven't been releases in awhile):
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/networkmanager-list/

Khaine · Post by **Khaine** » Wed Feb 02, 2005 12:30 am

I can't wait until I put gentoo back on my laptop and give these programs a go

Arker · Post by **Arker** » Sat Feb 05, 2005 9:55 pm

Does everyone that has it working have accurate signal strengths being reported? All my wireless interfaces show 0% strength even though they are quite strong. Any ideas?

Thanks,
~djc

rabbit · Post by **rabbit** » Sun Feb 06, 2005 7:02 am

Arker wrote:Does everyone that has it working have accurate signal strengths being reported? All my wireless interfaces show 0% strength even though they are quite strong. Any ideas?

Thanks,
~djc

It depends on your wireless drivers. I have a Centrino chipset, using the ipw2100 drivers, and they don't report signal strength accurately either. Those using ndiswrapper I believe experience the same issues.

If I understand it correctly, it's a mix of not enough standardization in the kernel as well as among drivers. I remember seeing something about it on a development list somewhere, but I forget where at the moment.

rel · Post by **rel** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 3:35 am

Somone knows why the signal indicator doesn't work?
iwconfig shows this information and the wifi tool in kde works
perfectly.

It stays at 0%, while signal strenght is always above 80%

ty, rel.

Spoony · Post by **Spoony** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 7:20 am

I'm really interested in using one of these programs. I've had nothing but problems with NetworkManager (it doesn't work). I'd like to give netapplet a try...but I'm lost on to what ebuilds everyone is using and what .tar.gz files everyone is using. Someone that has this working, please post a basic "how to" with links to what files they used.

Also, I'm using ndiswrapper to run a broadcom (emachines m6805 laptop). Has anyone had any problems with ndiswrapper?

Thanks

Arker · Post by **Arker** » Thu Feb 24, 2005 1:07 pm

I use ndiswrapper to wrap a Broadcomm driver and the only problem I have is that all wireless signals are shown as 0% strength. Aside from that though all is well. Switching networks works without any problems as far as I can tell using the netapplet/ndiswrapper combo.

~djc

Spoony · Post by **Spoony** » Fri Feb 25, 2005 2:42 am

What ebuilds/files did you use to get netapplet installed? Also, did you need to configure anything special?

fergus · Post by **fergus** » Fri Feb 25, 2005 3:22 am

In order for the netapplet to work you either need a recent (masked) baselayout or a version of the wireless-config scripts installed. Your on you own to get those working =)

Once you get those installed you can use the latest netapplet ebuilds located here
http://home.comcast.net/~fergus750/neta ... -r6.tar.gz

They should work.. if you have problems post back here and I can have a look...

As for the the signals strength issue.. i have the same problem with the ipw2200 driver.. Haven't really looked into the core of the problem as I figured it was a driver issue and would be fixed eventually. I was more concerned with getting some better behavior out of the util than anything else..

--
fergus

fergus · Post by **fergus** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 2:50 pm

all,

I updated the netapplet code to hopefully fix the signal reporting issues. With code borrowed from networkmanager and some modifications, I now have signal strength reporting with my ipw2200 driver. If you try this patch please post your results here so we can try and keep track of which drivers work and which ones don't.

http://home.comcast.net/~fergus750/neta ... o-r7.patch

--
fergus

kaksi · Post by **kaksi** » Sun Mar 13, 2005 6:28 pm

Is this the latest netapplet ebuild? http://home.comcast.net/~fergus750/neta ... o-r7.patch

Do you have a development page fergus where I can look for updated ebuilds?

fergus · Post by **fergus** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 3:01 pm

kaksi,

yeah, r7 is the latest and greatest.. do I have a dev page for it? nope.. not yet. I have been meaning to set something up but I am super busy lately.. getting married in two weeks =) maybe after the dust settles I can set up a basic page.. I have a few other apps that could be handy to more people too..

let me know how it works for ya. and my suggestion would be to grap the r6 tarball and then just update it for the r7 patch, that way you get the startup scripts too... enjoy

--
fergus

kaksi · Post by **kaksi** » Fri Mar 25, 2005 3:34 pm

Thats what I did! It works great with baselayout 1.11.10-r4. When I add a new AP it gets listen in the wireless config files just like if I would add it manually. This is the only applet I got working with hidden essid and wep cryptation.

Great job!

pangloss · Post by **pangloss** » Tue Mar 29, 2005 6:14 pm

since i'm also using ipw2200, this isn't exactly news, but r7 works for me with signal reporting.

i'm using ipw2200 1.0.2 and baselayout 1.11.9-r1

thanks fergus and congrats on the upcoming nuptials!

rt_clik · Post by **rt_clik** » Wed May 04, 2005 6:13 am

I successfully emerged version r6, and it works with my mad-wifi driven atheros interface. Started netdaemon successfully, and I can run netapplet from my xterm window, but I get text-mode output from the app...no GUI. While it is displaying expected information, I was hoping for something much prettier.

Checked out netapplet --help and netapplet --useage. Just for giggles, gave netapplet --display=0.0 (and netapplet --display=0) a try, but this resulted in a "(netapplet:11937): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: 0.0" error. Other X apps work fine, and it's not like I'm ssh'ing to the box or anything.

Anyone got any ideas on why I might be missing the "eye candy"?

Might be helpful to know I'm not running Gnome. All necessary gnome-libs are installed, and Gnome options are enabled for my xfce4 session. Other Gnome-centric apps work.

Thanks.

rabbit · Post by **rabbit** » Wed May 04, 2005 8:40 pm

Do you have a notification area running? That's where the applet lives.

rt_clik · Post by **rt_clik** » Wed May 04, 2005 8:49 pm

As I do not know what that is, I probably do not have one running. Since documentation appears to be a tad scarce, can you explain what you mean, and how to get there from here?

Thanks.

the new Gnome netapplet

signal indicator

Text-mode only?