F12: NetworkManager-Firefox: Firefox is currently in offline mode and can't browse the Web

[Paul Howarth]

On 30/11/09 09:55, Terry Barnaby wrote:
> On 11/29/2009 11:30 PM, Dan Williams wrote:
>> On Sat, 2009-11-28 at 09:10 +0000, Terry Barnaby wrote:
>>> On 11/28/2009 08:35 AM, Rakesh Pandit wrote:
>>>> 2009/11/28 Terry Barnaby wrote:
>>>>> If the NetworkManager service is running, but not managing the current
>>>>> network connection, then Firefox starts up in offline mode.
>>>>>
>>>>> Is this a bug in NetworkManager or Firefox ?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> This is odd behaviour and needs to be fixed. I would suggest open up a
>>>> bug against firefox. I know one can change
>>>> toolkit.networkmanager.disable preference, but it is a PITA for our
>>>> users. One of use cases is: Sometime network manager does not connect
>>>> me via my CDMA usb modem (in case signal is weak), but wvdial does and
>>>> once I switch from NM to wvdial, my firefox gets to offline mode,
>>>> which I don't expect it to as I am connected.
>>>>
>>> Ok, filed as: 542078
>>
>> NetworkManager is intended to control the default internet connection.
>> If NetworkManager cannot control the default internet connection, then
>> you may not want to use NetworkManager.
>>
>> In your case, you're using a mobile broadband device. The real bug here
>> is that for whatever reason, NM/MM aren't connecting your modem, and we
>> should follow up on that bug instead.
>>
>> Dan
>>
> I am not using a mobile broadband device. The network connection my systems
> use is not just the Internet it is a local network LAN connection that also
> serves the internet. Most of my systems use a local network server which
> provides NIS, /home and /data using NFS and VPN etc. I normally use the
> service "network" to bring up wired or wireless networking for this.
> Fedora,
> by default, uses NetworkManager to manage all network devices though. I use
> the service "network" as, for some reason, the NetworkManager service is
> started after the netfs and other services are started. Is there a reason
> for this ??

Don't know about the reason, but on my work desktop (where we have LDAP 
auth and NFS home dirs), I can still use NetworkManager in F12:

* Make sure your LAN interfaces are marked "available to all users" in 
NetworkManager (I think this corresponds to "ONBOOT=yes" in 
/etc/sysconfig/ifcfg-eth*)

* Add to /etc/sysconfig/network:

NETWORKWAIT=true

This should bring the network up before netfs.

Unfortunately I've had to revert to the old network service because I 
need bridged networking for my virt guests; there was a plan to support 
this in NetworkManager in F-12 
(http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/NetworkManagerBridging) but 
nothing seems to have happened with that, though I see there is a 
similar feature proposed for F-13 
(http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Shared_Network_Interface).

Paul.