managing Wifi services
Is there a good Debian package for managing Wifi access? Adding an entry to /etc/network/interfaces is OK if you only have one ESSID. But if you are going to connect to one of several phones, a home Wifi, McDonalds, and others then it becomes tiring to edit that file. I'd like something that allows a laptop to do the same things as an Android phone. To just automatically connect to a Wifi network that's in range. Ideally it would do it whenever there's no link on the Ethernet port. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
Quoting Russell Coker (russell@coker.com.au):
Is there a good Debian package for managing Wifi access? Adding an entry to /etc/network/interfaces is OK if you only have one ESSID. But if you are going to connect to one of several phones, a home Wifi, McDonalds, and others then it becomes tiring to edit that file.
I'd like something that allows a laptop to do the same things as an Android phone. To just automatically connect to a Wifi network that's in range. Ideally it would do it whenever there's no link on the Ethernet port.
Shamelessly stealing from the guy I shave: Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:33:35 -0700 From: Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> To: conspire@linuxmafia.com Subject: Things to look up, on the wireless matter Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. X-Mas: Bah humbug. List arrived at using apt-cache. ceni - Curses interface to /etc/network/interfaces connman - Intel Connection Manager daemon iw - tool for configuring Linux wireless devices network-config - Simple network configuration tool python-wicd - wired and wireless network manager - Python module wicd - wired and wireless network manager - metapackage [0] wicd-cli - wired and wireless network manager - scriptable console client [0] wicd-curses - wired and wireless network manager - Curses client wicd-daemon - wired and wireless network manager - daemon wicd-gtk - wired and wireless network manager - GTK+ client wicd-kde - Wired and wireless network manager - plasmoid wifi-radar - graphical utility for managing Wi-Fi profiles wpasupplicant - client support for WPA and WPA2 (IEEE 802.11i) [1] wpagui - graphical user interface for wpa_supplicant wireless-tools - Tools for manipulating Linux Wireless Extensions 'iw' looks promising and something to watch. http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Documentation/iw (It's the replacement for iwconfig, which is now deprecated.) http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Documentation/ calls out NetworkManager, wicd, and connman as 'wireless managers'. [0] Sometimes packaged as wicd/wicd-client [1] Sometimes packaged as wpa_supplicant (A propos of nothing special, I'm going to be in Wellington, NZ for http://www.aucontraire.org.nz/ , 12-14 July, and just before/after.) -- Cheers, Being die-hard loyal to a company is like being in an intimate rela- Rick Moen tionship with a brick. The brick cares nothing for you. The brick rick@linux will only cause you pain when it forgets about you. The brick serves mafia.com only its interests, and nothing else is of consequence. --Mackieman
Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> wrote:
Is there a good Debian package for managing Wifi access? Adding an entry to /etc/network/interfaces is OK if you only have one ESSID. But if you are going to connect to one of several phones, a home Wifi, McDonalds, and others then it becomes tiring to edit that file.
On 2013-07-09 14:37, Jeremy Visser wrote:
On 09/07/13 12:54, Russell Coker wrote:
Is there a good Debian package for managing Wifi access?
network-manager
I would've said that, but the specification was for a "good" package. I don't know that network-manager qualifies... -- Regards, Matthew Cengia
On Tue, 2013-07-09 at 14:55 +1000, Matthew Cengia wrote:
On 2013-07-09 14:37, Jeremy Visser wrote:
On 09/07/13 12:54, Russell Coker wrote:
Is there a good Debian package for managing Wifi access?
network-manager
I would've said that, but the specification was for a "good" package. I don't know that network-manager qualifies...
_______________________________________________ luv-main mailing list luv-main@luv.asn.au http://lists.luv.asn.au/listinfo/luv-main
Hi Guys, Well network-manager works really well for me in SuSe 12.3, same product different package manager, but it stores previous connections and logs in to each network accurately. Andrew Greig
Matthew Cengia <mattcen@gmail.com> wrote:
On 2013-07-09 14:37, Jeremy Visser wrote:
On 09/07/13 12:54, Russell Coker wrote:
Is there a good Debian package for managing Wifi access?
network-manager
I would've said that, but the specification was for a "good" package. I don't know that network-manager qualifies...
Its command line interface is limited; according to Debian's wiki page, you can't configure a static IP address with it (this might have changed); I know people who've inadvertently lost connectivity to remote systems by changing configuration files that network-manager was watching. Of course, if you're aware of this behaviour you can avoid the problem by ensuring that it isn't running when you edit network-related configuration files.
Jason White <jason@jasonjgw.net> writes:
Matthew Cengia <mattcen@gmail.com> wrote:
On 2013-07-09 14:37, Jeremy Visser wrote:
On 09/07/13 12:54, Russell Coker wrote:
Is there a good Debian package for managing Wifi access?
network-manager
I would've said that, but the specification was for a "good" package. I don't know that network-manager qualifies...
Its command line interface is limited; according to Debian's wiki page, you can't configure a static IP address with it (this might have changed); I know people who've inadvertently lost connectivity to remote systems by changing configuration files that network-manager was watching. Of course, if you're aware of this behaviour you can avoid the problem by ensuring that it isn't running when you edit network-related configuration files.
Last time I used it, it also refused to connect to wifi with a PSK until after I logged into a GUI -- and I think when the screensaver turned on, it turned off the wifi there as well. That made me REALLY HAPPY when I came back to find 800MB of 850MB of download still to go. Also couldn't just turn it on and SSH into it. I think that was in Ubuntu 11.10. Might be fixed by now, but I think it was "by design", because the PSK was stored in the gnome keyring.
Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> writes:
Is there a good Debian package for managing Wifi access? Adding an entry to /etc/network/interfaces is OK if you only have one ESSID. But if you are going to connect to one of several phones, a home Wifi, McDonalds, and others then it becomes tiring to edit that file.
I'd like something that allows a laptop to do the same things as an Android phone. To just automatically connect to a Wifi network that's in range. Ideally it would do it whenever there's no link on the Ethernet port.
In order of preference[0], wicd, wifi-radar, network-manager. [0] not mine -- I mostly have predictable ESSIDs, so I do <http://cyber.com.au/~twb/snarf/wifi.txt>. But it seems to be the preference order of everybody I talk to about it. I actually had to add a café AP the other day, so I just did wpa_cli scan # wait a bit wpa_cli scan_results # look for an open AP # add it to list with key_mgmt=NONE I haven't bothered to sort out something that's smart enough to toggle wifi on and off when the ethernet loses sync, but that OUGHT to be a matter of hooking into the eth0 post-up/down in network(5) -- although you probably need allow-hotplug, which stupid ubuntu doesn't support AT ALL (at least on GUIless systems), rant rant.
On Tue, 9 Jul 2013, Trent W. Buck wrote:
Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> writes:
Is there a good Debian package for managing Wifi access? Adding an entry to /etc/network/interfaces is OK if you only have one ESSID. But if you are going to connect to one of several phones, a home Wifi, McDonalds, and others then it becomes tiring to edit that file.
I'd like something that allows a laptop to do the same things as an Android phone. To just automatically connect to a Wifi network that's in range. Ideally it would do it whenever there's no link on the Ethernet port.
In order of preference[0], wicd, wifi-radar, network-manager.
[0] not mine -- I mostly have predictable ESSIDs, so I do <http://cyber.com.au/~twb/snarf/wifi.txt>. But it seems to be the preference order of everybody I talk to about it.
Where's wpa-roam-default-iface documented? My google fue is failing me today.
I actually had to add a café AP the other day, so I just did
wpa_cli scan # wait a bit wpa_cli scan_results # look for an open AP # add it to list with key_mgmt=NONE
I haven't bothered to sort out something that's smart enough to toggle wifi on and off when the ethernet loses sync, but that OUGHT to be a matter of hooking into the eth0 post-up/down in network(5)
I use bonding with eth0 (sometimes eth1 too if I have a gigabit pci-express card in my laptop, which is prone to having a more brittle connection both physically and kernel module wise). I can't claim it to be reliable and less trouble than it's worth though. Just occasionally, specific machines on the network can't talk to other specific machines on the network when they're all set up to bond between wired and wireless. So the new laptop hasn't been set up yet and probably won't ever be... This should all just be automatic, and not require any gooeys, especially nothing depending on a size 3 grey bearded Gnome. Computers are wonderful at doing automatic things automatically. But instead, gooey network designers think it's acceptable to just add a second IP address in an ad-hoc fashion, and when it drops off, all your open ssh connections drop out instead of failing over to the other available interfaces. -- Tim Connors
On 2013-07-11 10:37, Tim Connors wrote:
On Tue, 9 Jul 2013, Trent W. Buck wrote:
Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> writes:
Is there a good Debian package for managing Wifi access? Adding an entry to /etc/network/interfaces is OK if you only have one ESSID. But if you are going to connect to one of several phones, a home Wifi, McDonalds, and others then it becomes tiring to edit that file.
I'd like something that allows a laptop to do the same things as an Android phone. To just automatically connect to a Wifi network that's in range. Ideally it would do it whenever there's no link on the Ethernet port.
In order of preference[0], wicd, wifi-radar, network-manager.
[0] not mine -- I mostly have predictable ESSIDs, so I do <http://cyber.com.au/~twb/snarf/wifi.txt>. But it seems to be the preference order of everybody I talk to about it.
Where's wpa-roam-default-iface documented? My google fue is failing me today.
[...] /usr/share/doc/wpa_supplicant/README.modes.gz. "3. Mode #2: Roaming Mode" -- Regards, Matthew Cengia
Matthew Cengia wrote:
On 2013-07-11 10:37, Tim Connors wrote:
On Tue, 9 Jul 2013, Trent W. Buck wrote:
[0] not mine -- I mostly have predictable ESSIDs, so I do <http://cyber.com.au/~twb/snarf/wifi.txt>. But it seems to be the preference order of everybody I talk to about it.
Where's wpa-roam-default-iface documented? My google fue is failing me today.
[...]
/usr/share/doc/wpa_supplicant/README.modes.gz. "3. Mode #2: Roaming Mode"
PS: ifupdown is bad mojo, don't read its source if you value your sanity.
On Thu, 11 Jul 2013, Tim Connors <tconnors@rather.puzzling.org> wrote:
at doing automatic things automatically. But instead, gooey network designers think it's acceptable to just add a second IP address in an ad-hoc fashion, and when it drops off, all your open ssh connections drop out instead of failing over to the other available interfaces.
OpenVPN seems reasonably good at recovering from network changes. If you ran ssh (and anything else that needs long lasting TCP connections) over OpenVPN then that might work. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
participants (9)
-
Andrew Greig -
Jason White -
Jeremy Visser -
Matthew Cengia -
Rick Moen -
Russell Coker -
Tim Connors -
Trent W. Buck -
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