NetworkManager Is Driving Me Crazy!

[Paul Johnson]

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 2:13 PM, Rick Bilonick <rab at nauticom.net> wrote:
> When I first set up Fedora 8, I had some problems getting wlan0 (via
>  ndiswrapper) working. Now I can prevent wlan0 from being activated, even
>  when I'm using a wired connection via eth0.
>

Step back from the details a minute. This post reminded me of a debate
we had here last week about wireless. I think some extra services are
running on your laptop.  Also, I think there is some miscommunication
about what it means to have wireless "on".

You say you have to kill wpa_supplicant manually, and I think that is
a sign of the first mis-configuration.  The wpa_supplicant service
should be turned off in system-config-services.  In there you should
also have the network service turned off.   NetworkManager can start a
wpa_supplicant process if it needs one, and it will turn it off for
you when  you stop the NetworkManager.

If you turn off NetworkManager and NetworkManagerDispatcher as well,
then it is absolutely impossible for  the laptop to automatically
bring up a wireless connection.  It just can't happen.

Now, if you run "/sbin/ifconfig" you should see no devices.  Do you see devices?

My situation is like yours. I have wireless various places, and also a
static IP at the office.

I leave NetworkManager turned on. (network is off, wpa_supplicant is
off). When I go to the office and start up, NM tries to search for
wireless networks and join them, but always fails.  It searches for
wired DHCP as well.  As soon as the network icon appears in the panel,
then I click on that icon (nm-applet is the program it comes from) and
turn off networking.  Note I mean turn off all networking, not just
wireless.

Then I open a terminal and manually turn on my configured wired
device, either with system-config-network or "/sbin/ifup eth0"  (were
I did the configuration before with s-c-n).

After turning on the wire, I read the contents of "/etc/resolv.conf"
to make sure the DNS server is correct.  It is almost never correct,
because without DHCP running, I have the last valid name server.
Sometimes it is correct, and I think that is because, before I stopped
NetworkManager, it scanned the environment and found a server that was
willing to tell it the DNS.  But that doesn't always happen.

Even after going through this exercise, I still generally see the
wlan0 device listed in /sbin/ifconfig output.  IT is listed, but it is
not associated, it has not obtained an IP number, and it does not
cause trouble (yet).

PJ

-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas