Package: network-manager Version: 0.6.6-2 Severity: normal If Network Manager does not handle all interfaces currently it reports offline for network status when none of the interfaces it manages is online.
This is just plain incorrect. Currently Network Manager does not seem to have a clue whether interfaces that are not managed by it are on- or offline. So it shouldn't pretend to know whether the network in itself is on- or offline in this case. If it doesn't know it should tell so and let applications decide what to make of it. Or it should - at users option maybe - make an educated guess. If a default route and DNS servers are configured, Network Manager IMHO can assume that the network is online. At least if the user tells it to use that approximation. This problem gets more and more serious, the more application rely solely on Network Manager regarding network status information (which IMHO is a bug in itself). I filed a bug report for Iceweasel 3.0.1 already: http://bugs.debian.org/491822 There are several related bugs: - http://bugs.debian.org/436181, http://bugs.debian.org/431427, http://bugs.debian.org/415891, http://bugs.debian.org/408292: network manager and static configurations - http://bugs.debian.org/355478: Conflicts with other packages which manage the network In the related Firefox 3 bug report Dan Williams proposes an all-or-nothing scenario for network manager: - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=424626#c6 - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=424626#c41 I dare to disagree on that at least as long as I can not be convinced that Network Manager is the perfect tool for all my network needs. I currently still prefer to use guessnet and ifplugd on eth0, partly cause I did not yet setup a DHCP server on my ASUS WL-500g Premium Debian based DSL router. But I like to use Network Manager with WLAN. guessnet detects my routers IP and MAC address and then eth0 is configured statically. Yes, once I setup dnsmasq this would no longer be required. But then there are people who use connections that are unsupported by Network Manager like UMTS and special PPP configuration or what not. I think if Network Manager finds that it does not manage all interfaces it should at least report "unknown" as network status. Or the semantic of that report should be "the interfaces *I* manage are offline" and it would be up to the application to handle this. Especially with Firefox 3 thats currently really annoying. I do not like software patronizing me that way cause I like to decide how I setup my network. I would like to use Network Manager but as long as using it causes me more problems than it solves I may just leave it disabled usually. -- System Information: Debian Release: lenny/sid APT prefers testing APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (400, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.25.10-tp42-toi-3.0-rc7 (PREEMPT) Locale: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] (charmap=ISO-8859-15) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Versions of packages network-manager depends on: ii adduser 3.108 add and remove users and groups ii dbus 1.2.1-2 simple interprocess messaging syst ii dhcdbd 3.0-4 D-Bus interface to the ISC DHCP cl ii hal 0.5.11-2 Hardware Abstraction Layer ii ifupdown 0.6.8+nmu1 high level tools to configure netw ii iproute 20080417-1 networking and traffic control too ii libc6 2.7-10 GNU C Library: Shared libraries ii libdbus-1-3 1.2.1-2 simple interprocess messaging syst ii libdbus-glib-1-2 0.76-1 simple interprocess messaging syst ii libgcrypt11 1.4.1-1 LGPL Crypto library - runtime libr ii libglib2.0-0 2.16.3-2 The GLib library of C routines ii libgpg-error0 1.4-2 library for common error values an ii libhal1 0.5.11-2 Hardware Abstraction Layer - share ii libiw29 29-1 Wireless tools - library ii libnl1 1.1-2 library for dealing with netlink s ii libnm-util0 0.6.6-2 network management framework (shar ii lsb-base 3.2-12 Linux Standard Base 3.2 init scrip ii wpasupplicant 0.6.3-2 Client support for WPA and WPA2 (I Versions of packages network-manager recommends: ii network-manager-kde 1:0.2.2-1 KDE systray applet for controlling -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]