[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#634972: network-manager: inconvenient for manual config editing

[Tzafrir Cohen]

Package: network-manager
Version: 0.8.4.0-2
Severity: wishlist


I configured a wireless connection on my system with NetworkManager. It
it very unintuitive, to say the least.

NetworkManager provides /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/ . A
properly-written config file dropped in the should do the trick.

Sadly there is no such example config file in the the docus directory of
the package. Below is a slightly-obfuscated version of the file that I
used:


[connection]
type=802-11-wireless
id=TheNetwork
# Note: you MUST unrem this but with a new UUID of your own
#uuid=09c4b373-d842-0198-5d8f-44894de25d0ea0

[802-11-wireless]
ssid=TheNameOfTheNetwork
security=802-11-wireless-security

[802-11-wireless-security]
key-mgmt=wpa-psk
psk=SECRET


This was still not good enough. It took me a while (and code browsing) to
figure out that the interface is considered to be "unavailable" because
the global "wireless" option was disabled, in

  /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state

That configuration file is not mentioned anywhere in NetworkManager(8).
Likewise there is no firendly warning in the logs "hey, we found a
wireless interface but we won't use it, as wireless support is disabled."

Another minor issue is the syntax of nmcli. It seems that nmcli will find
the longest possible method to define a command. To start the network
interface:

  nmcli con up   id TheNetwork
  nmcli con down id TheNetwork

I just wish there would be a command-line interface that would do the
Right Thing[tm] with a shorter command-line.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.39-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=he_IL.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=he_IL.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages network-manager depends on:
ii  adduser                      3.113       add and remove users and groups
ii  dbus                         1.4.12-4    simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  isc-dhcp-client              4.1.1-P1-17 ISC DHCP client
ii  libc6                        2.13-7      Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libdbus-1-3                  1.4.12-4    simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2             0.94-4      simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libgcrypt11                  1.4.6-7     LGPL Crypto library - runtime libr
ii  libglib2.0-0                 2.28.6-1    The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgnutls26                  2.10.5-2    the GNU TLS library - runtime libr
ii  libgudev-1.0-0               171-3       GObject-based wrapper library for 
ii  libnl1                       1.1-7       library for dealing with netlink s
ii  libnm-glib2                  0.8.4.0-2   network management framework (GLib
ii  libnm-util1                  0.8.4.0-2   network management framework (shar
ii  libpolkit-gobject-1-0        0.101-4     PolicyKit Authorization API
ii  libuuid1                     2.17.2-9.1  Universally Unique ID library
ii  lsb-base                     3.2-27      Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip
ii  udev                         171-3       /dev/ and hotplug management daemo
ii  wpasupplicant                0.7.3-3     client support for WPA and WPA2 (I

Versions of packages network-manager recommends:
ii  dnsmasq-base                  2.57-1     A small caching DNS proxy and DHCP
ii  iptables                      1.4.11.1-2 administration tools for packet fi
ii  modemmanager                  0.4.997-1  D-Bus service for managing modems
ii  policykit-1                   0.101-4    framework for managing administrat
ii  ppp                           2.4.5-5    Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) - da

Versions of packages network-manager suggests:
ii  avahi-autoipd                 0.6.30-5   Avahi IPv4LL network address confi

-- no debconf information