NetworkManager
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://people.redhat.com/dcbw/NetworkManager/ here] .
Network-Manager is beta software. You can find breezy packages [http://bootlab.org/~j/NetworkManager-breezy/ here].
Please note that Network-Manager is only installable on Breezy currently! Also make sure you read to the end of this howto. If you are not confident about compiling and stuff, please wait for a few days as network-manager will be in the Breezy repositories soon.
Installation
Binary Packages
To install the packages add this to /etc/apt/sources.list:
#NetworkManager deb http://bootlab.org/~j/NetworkManager-breezy/ ./ deb-src http://bootlab.org/~j/NetworkManager-breezy/ ./
Install NetworkManager and it's dependencies by
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install network-manager
Compile from source (for non x86 systems)
Add this to /etc/apt/sources.list:
#NetworkManager deb-src http://bootlab.org/~j/NetworkManager-breezy/ ./
Install the NetworkManager source and dependencies by
sudo apt-get -b source network-manager
Then do the usual compile by
./configure make sudo make install
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
Restarting dbus services
You must restart the dbus service for network manager to work properly.
sudo /etc/init.d/dbus restart
Launching at start
If the networkmanager service doesn't start automatically at start, you can bring it up with
sudo /etc/init.d/NetworkManager start
To make this change permanent
cd /etc/init.d sudo update-rc.d NetworkManager defaults
You'll also need to add nm-applet to your startup of Desktop Environment/Window Manager
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