Network Manager

[Dan Williams]

On Tue, 2004-10-12 at 14:04 -0400, Amitabha Roy wrote:
> Hello:
> 
> What exactly is Network Manager supposed to do ? I  started NM as a 
> service from system-config-services,
> it is running. However, the wireless applet  on gnome-panel shows no 
> networks and all options are grayed out (on right click).
> And it says that there are no network devices, which is wrong, since I 
> am using an integrated WIFI card which is working.
> Is there an alternate user interface to access the Network Manager ?

I would suggest upgrading to the latest NetworkManager in Rawhide,
NetworkManager-0.2-4.  This is much improved, and the applet is a
notification icon now rather than an actual panel applet.

To access the UI of NetworkManager, you have to run a user-side daemon
called "NetworkManagerInfo".  This should be added to your session, or
you can start it up from a terminal.  This daemon controls the life of
the panel applet, and also feeds user preferences to NetworkManager.

So it should be like this:
1) NetworkManager service gets started
2) NetworkManagerInfo gets started at login-time (must be started after
NetworkManager, otherwise it exits by design)
3) NMI will automatically add the applet to your panel

> Does NM have the ability to pick up a wireless network in a location 
> (that has many wireless networks) based on what the user
> chose the last time around ? I know that Windows does this even for 
> non-broadcast essid networks, correctly choosing my non-broadcast ssid home
> network over my neighbours' broadcast members after the first time I 
> choose it over the others. This functionality would be very nice
> for my linux laptop.

NetworkManager currently does not work with non-broadcasting APs.  This
will get fixed soon.  In any case, NetworkManager will attempt to
connect to any access point you have previously chosen from the panel
applet's menu, and it will pick the last one you chose from that menu,
even across reboots (that info is stored in GConf).

Dan