NetworkManager Fantastic!

[jdeslip]

I have been using fedora for years now, but I just discovered the NetworkManager daemon.

If you need a program to manager your wireless connections check this out by doing:

/etc/init.d/NetworkManager start (and "chkconfig NetworkManager on" to put it on every boot).

It puts an icon in your notification bar that lets you see local networks and signal strength, and signing on is a simple click! It is like the windows wireless taskbar item - but faster and cleaner!

I am not sure why this is hidden - I love it. No longer will I be typing 'iwconfig'

-Jack

[louspag]

How does it work for you? I've installed it and tried to use it but it is very spotty at best. It doesn't seem to pick-up all the networks in range all the time (meaning, it may or may not list them eventhough they are in range). The other problem is that It doesn't connect to whichever you pick. At home my wifi is locked down but at the coffee shop it open. I need to manaully go into the network settings and change the wep to connect to either. I thought it would let me simply scan for an available network, select the one I want to connect to and be done with it. But it just doesn't seem to work that way.

[Nobber]

I don't find NetworkManager all that fantastic. On my home network I use a static IP address with WPA-PSK, and NetworkManager doesn't support that kind of setup. If you're using DHCP I suppose it's probably fine, though.

[jdeslip]

Hmm, it seems to pick them all up for me - and I can just scan and select with no particular difference between open and keyed networkds. I am using one that I must have got from fedora 6 official repos somehow 0.6.4 I think. Perhaps you are using an older version? My only issue with it is that it prompts for my gnome-keyring password everytime it accesses a shared WEP key. I wonder if I can get around this...

[bman]

Yeah, NetworkManager works a treat for me as well. I have three wireless networks which I connect to on a regular basis and it only usually ever has trouble with one of these. And I think thats because theres a problem with that network, not a problem with Network Manager.

Saying that, I did try using it on my families PC and it just didn't work at all. Although I didn't mess with it too much since the PC always connects to the same wireless network anyway.

I think the main advantage of Network Manager is that it'll switch between multiple wireless and wired networks easily, without you having to tell it to do anything (apart from enter the password on startup).

[brunson]

I don't find NetworkManager all that fantastic. On my home network I use a static IP address with WPA-PSK, and NetworkManager doesn't support that kind of setup. If you're using DHCP I suppose it's probably fine, though.
I just put my static IP assignments into my DHCP server. Works great for me.

[louspag]

jdeslip, you do have a more recent version then me. I have 0.5.6. I believe it came with the repo updates. Where can I get the 0.6.4 ? maybe that will fix my problem

[jdeslip]

What version of fedora are you using? I just checked the official repos, and the latest version is 0.6.4 in both fedora 5 and 6 repos. When is the last time you ran yum update?

[louspag]

i yum update regularly so probably a few days ago. I will update tonight to be sure.

[louspag]

i just update everything and I still have the 0.5.6 version am i pointing to the wrong repo for the updates? how can I check somewhere wlse for the updates?

[jdeslip]

Are you using Fedora 6? Try "yum clean all"? First. You can get the rpms here:

download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/6/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS

or simply type NetworkManager into rpm.pbone.net (with fedora 6 option checked). And you will see that version 0.6.4 is there in the official repos.