Re: Questions about 0.5.1

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Mon, 2005-10-24 at 10:22 +0200, Giuseppe Castagna wrote:
> computer, which is a little boring. Is it possible to avoid to type a passwd for 
> the WEP key, either by making NM not to use the keyring or the keyring not to 
> ask the passwd. Alternatively is it possible to have a single passwd request for 
> the keyring and the ssh-askpasswd?

This is more a bug with gnome-keyring, such that if you log in, and your
keyring password is the same as your login password, your keyring
probably should be unlocked.  It's annoying, yes.

> 2) I live in a densely inhabited neighborhood, thus in my living room besides my 
> wife I also get 4 other wireless networks of my neighbors. Since I do not 
> broadcast my ESSID then as soon as I connect NM tries to connect on my neighbors 
> networks. Is it possible to force NM to try first the last used network 
> (especially when there is a network that does not broadcast the ESSID). Or 
> alternatively tell NM to never try to connect to some known networks?

Same here, lots of APs near my apartment.  The problem here is that it
takes a scan or two to match up the beacon frame from your
non-broadcasting access point with the stored BSSID so that NM knows the
ESSID of your access point.  In that time, it's connected to a different
access point.

NM _does_ connect to the last access point you chose, if it can see that
access point.  In your case, it doesn't see it fast enough.  Either we
work automatically with non-broadcasting ESSIDs, or we take longer to do
initial connections.

What you can do right now is to remove the entries in GConf that refer
to your neighbors wireless networks.  You must have connected to them at
least once, since NM won't connect to a network you haven't explicitly
chosen from the menu.  If you do that, but leave in the entry for your
access point, NM will start up and connect to your access point only.

To start from scratch, use:

gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /system/networking/wireless/networks

which will blow away all stored wireless network information.  Then use
"Connect to other network..." to connect to your AP.

> 3) Finally let me add that NM is great. It was on the top of my wishlist and as 
> it is it nearly matches all my needs. I really needed it since I travel a lot 
> attending for instance conferences and visiting other labs. So I use a lot of 
> different wifi networks. But most of them however are short-lived (e.g. 
> conferences) so I was wondering whether it is possible to delete existing 
> configurations (I'm afraid of Window's always growing register syndrom :-) ), 
> without using e.g. gnomeconf.

We do very much need a small app to change/remove wireless networks.
Any volunteers?  Python would be a good choice.  I don't think the
applet should include this functionality, but I'm open to debate.

> 4) Now that the top of my wishlist is erased, the next item becomes bluetooth 
> management. Is it possible to use the same NM technology to handle BT 
> connections? I'm not speaking just about networking (I saw the discussion in the 
> archives) but also other devices. For instance I use a BT for Palm, mouse and 
> headset, but everytime I have to handle connections by scripts. Any plans about 
> this kind of support?

Yes, but Chris Aillon needs to get his GObject patch done first.  I'd
really hate to add Bluetooth support with NMDevice like it is right now.
We need to convert NMDevice into a real GObject so that we can subclass
it for wireless, wired, bluetooth, etc devices.

Dan