NetworkManager

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== User comment ==

An interesting thing happens if you combine Network Manager with ["Wifidocs/Driver/Ndiswrapper"]. Since the command "ndiswrapper -m" only creates an alias, eg. "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper", the module will only be loaded when the interface wlan0 is used. But since Network Manager requires an empty interfaces list, ndiswrapper never gets loaded. A possible fix is to add a line "ndiswrapper" to /etc/modules. I hope this is the right place for this comment, YungChinOei

Network Manager

Network Manager aims for Network Connectivity which "Just Works". The computer should use the wired network connection when its plugged in, but automatically switch to a wireless connection when the user unplugs it and walks away from the desk. Likewise, when the user plugs the computer back in, the computer should switch back to the wired connection. The user should, most times, not even notice that their connection has has been managed for them; they should simply see uninterrupted network connectivity.

More information about Network Manager is available [http://www.gnome.org/projects/NetworkManager/ here] .

Network-Manager is beta software. You can find packages in [http://packages.ubuntu.com/breezy/net/network-manager breezy/universe]

Installation

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper)

  1. Applications, Add/Remove Programs
  2. Find Network Manager in the Internet section
  3. Check the adjacent box to select Network Manager for installation
  4. Click OK

Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy)

To install the packages make sure you have universe added to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu breezy universe

Install NetworkManager and its dependencies by

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install network-manager

Compile from cvs

Get build dependencies and check out networkmanager cvs code by

sudo apt-get build-dep network-manager
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome login
cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome co NetworkManager
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
make
sudo make install

Note

Configuring Devices

Devices which are automatically configured on boot will not be available in NetworkManager. To allow network manager to use all of your devices remove instances of auto in /etc/network/interfaces.

Restarting dbus services

NetworkManager is lanuched as a dbus service, thats why you have to restart dbus after installing NetworkManager

sudo /etc/init.d/dbus restart

Gnome

Go to System -> Preferences -> Sessions In the Startup Programs tab, click Add type "nm-applet", click OK. log out of your gnome session, and log back in again.

Other Window Managers/Desktop Environments

add nm-applet to your startup

Issues

If nm-applet gives this error message

WARNING **: <WARNING>   (): nmwa_dbus_init() could not acquire its service.  dbus_bus_acquire_service() says: 'Connection ":1.26" is not allowed to own the service "org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerInfo" due to security policies in  the configuration file'

try launching nm-applet with

nm-applet --sm-disable

If it still dosen't work you'd have to edit the dbus-1 configuration files for both NetworkManager and nm-applet (this might be a security compromise, if there's another way to get nm-applet to work, please add it here).

Change the default policy context in both /etc/dbus-1/system.d/NetworkManager.conf and /etc/dbus-1/system.d/nm-applet.conf so it says 'allow' instead of 'deny'.

<policy context="default">
        <allow own="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>
        <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>
        <allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>
</policy>

Then restart dbus

sudo /etc/init.d/dbus restart

and launch the applet

nm-applet

Note: if you upgraded from Breezy to Dapper and you had modified files in /etc/pam.d/ it is possible that they were not altered properly to include a reference to the pam_foreground module. /etc/pam.d/common-session should look like this:

session required        pam_foreground.so
session required        pam_unix.so

This will also affect [http://live.gnome.org/PowerManager Gnome Power Manager] and Gnome Volume Manager. See [https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/libpam-foreground/+bug/34063 this bug] for more info.

Dapper

If it is not managing your network connections after upgrading to Dapper, you'll need to comment out the references to all interfaces (except lo) in /etc/network/interfaces to let NetworkManager handle them.

sudo cp /etc/network/interfaces /etc/network/interfaces.bak
sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

It should look similar to this when you are done:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# This is a list of hotpluggable network interfaces.
# They will be activated automatically by the hotplug subsystem.
# auto eth1

# iface eth1 inet dhcp

Then reboot and you should be good to go!

Alternative Version (no BIND dependency)

There is an alternative version of Network Manager (for Breezy) that has no BIND dependency. Some people have DNS troubles with the version in the repos, and removing the BIND dependency eliminates a possible security hole (not that BIND is insecure, but eliminating it only improves security). Look at [http://wildbill.nulldevice.net/archives/000148.html this page] for more information and to download necessary packages. Additional information is available [http://pykeylogger.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Ubuntu:Chronicles#Multiple_Wireless_Profiles here].

User comment

An interesting thing happens if you combine Network Manager with ["Wifidocs/Driver/Ndiswrapper"]. Since the command "ndiswrapper -m" only creates an alias, eg. "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper", the module will only be loaded when the interface wlan0 is used. But since Network Manager requires an empty interfaces list, ndiswrapper never gets loaded. A possible fix is to add a line "ndiswrapper" to /etc/modules. I hope this is the right place for this comment, YungChinOei


CategoryDocumentation CategoryNetworking

NetworkManager (last edited 2008-08-06 17:01:39 by localhost)