NetworkManager (was: Are these official fc4 iso's?)

[David Zeuthen]

On Sun, 2005-06-12 at 11:19 -0600, Michal Jaegermann wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 12, 2005 at 01:55:25AM -0400, David Zeuthen wrote:
> > 
> > Uhm, you see, NetworkManager is *specifically designed* to take over all
> > networking
> ....
> > ... , identity ESS id's, configure WEP keys, invoke DHCP
> 
> Taking into account that there exist programs for automatically
> breaking WEP keys, although a considerable number of sniffed
> packets is required, that does not sound like so exciting deal.
> WPA should be used quite a while ago.

Certainly - and I know Dan and others are looking into this through
wpa_supplicant integration. Btw, we don't store the cached WEP keys in
the clear; we use gnome-keyring to encrypt it.

> > I don't have to do a *single thing* and
> > I get smooth animations and visual feedback on top  :-). It just works.
> 
> It is hard to figure out what are preconditions for that, as
> NetworkManager carefuly avoids what could be taken for a
> documentation, 

Well, you know, the idea here is that things should just work out of the
box by default hence we don't provide a lot of documentation for
configuration. All the configuration you need (which is little) is
available from the GUI (if it's not, then it's a bug). Again, no, we
don't yet attempt to solve all aspects of networking and leet
configuration, only the aspects that the broad majority needs.

> but when I had an opportunity to try it I have seen
> only a picture of a rotating beam and _nothing_ was ever detected.
> I can believe that it may work in some limited circumstances but
> this is not good enough.

Well, as noted you may just be suffering from bad networking drivers
[1]. Also, in the early days NetworkManager wasn't too stable but at
least for the past not-so-few months it's been working very well for me
and others that I know. 

    David

[1] : for example, I've got a USB Wireless 802.11b device that works
flawlessly when configured by hand but the poor driver gets confused
when NetworkManager uses it. If anything, NetworkManager is also a tool
for QC'ing drivers :-). Drivers definitely contribute to giving NM a bad
rep... and, uhm, vice versa :-)