Bug#919619: network-manager: should support iwd as wpasupplicant alternative
Hi, On Thu, Nov 07, 2019 at 12:21:45AM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: > Please relax to only _recommend_ wpasupplicant, to allow (even if not > recommend) use with IWD. Since iwd 1.0 is now out, it should (hopefully) atleast provide a stable (dbus) interface. Here's my updated view on things related to NM with my personal view of severity in brackets: - iwd support in NM is still immature (minor features that I would count as essential missing, eg. NM still actively refuse to connect to hidden SSIDs with iwd backend. No way to provision hidden networks, many other similar missing features which might not be used by all but is critical for a connection for some.) [minor] - NM upstream developers seems still very hesitant to support iwd at all, e.g. last I talked to them they still think NOTHING is a better fallback than falling back on iwd if wpasupplicant is not available/installed. Recent upstream comments like "those unfortunate enough to run IWD" doesn't give me confidence they'll change they're about to change their mind very soon either. [major] - debian kernel options still missing to be able to use iwd with WPA2 Enterprise networks. (And no idea about status of NM with iwd and Enterprise networks.) [medium] At this point in time I personally find it hard to argue for supporting using NM without having wpasupplicant installed (in favour of iwd). The extra support burden for people who blindly install without recommends simply isn't worth it. IMHO a better option would be to eventually just add iwd as an alternative on the wpasupplicant dependency (but I don't think we're quite there yet either). Those that want to use iwd (with NM), still need to manually configure NM and while doing so stopping/disabling the wpasupplicant service (while keeping it installed in case of emergencies) isn't a big extra burden IMHO. Once using iwd can actually be considered to "just work" for common operations I'm all for getting rid of the wpasupplicant baggage, but for now I think efforts are needed (mainly) in NM upstream to get there. (Help welcome! ;-P) PS. The required kernel option has now atleast been discussed with debian kernel team, but unfortunately I find it quite depressing that their latest feedback was that they say they don't have time to enable a single Kconfig option (off -> module). I have no idea why shipping yet another module would be something they would have to think so hard about or why enabling the option would take more time than talk about it. .oO( So close, but yet so far away ) Regards, Andreas Henriksson
Bug#919619: [Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#919619: network-manager: should support iwd as wpasupplicant alternative
Am 07.11.19 um 00:21 schrieb Jonas Smedegaard: > Quoting Jonas Smedegaard (2019-02-03 23:44:24) >> Quoting Andreas Henriksson (2019-02-03 23:12:37) >>> Control: severity -1 wishlist >> >> Please reconsider the severity, because... >> >>> On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 10:09:21PM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: network-manager is compiled with support for iwd, but the package declares an absolute dependency on wpasupplicant. >> >> Above is the issue reported: I.e. the _possibility_ for using iwd as >> alternative. > > Please relax to only _recommend_ wpasupplicant, to allow (even if not > recommend) use with IWD. Once we have an *automatic* fallback to iwd I'm happy to add iwd as alternative dependency. Until then, I prefer to keep wpasupplicant as a hard depends. Unfortunately we have way too many users which have Recommends disabled and I'm not intending to break those setups and get bug reports. Michael -- Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the universe are pointed away from Earth? signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Bug#919619: network-manager: should support iwd as wpasupplicant alternative
Quoting Jonas Smedegaard (2019-02-03 23:44:24) > Quoting Andreas Henriksson (2019-02-03 23:12:37) > > Control: severity -1 wishlist > > Please reconsider the severity, because... > > > On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 10:09:21PM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: > > > network-manager is compiled with support for iwd, but the package > > > declares an absolute dependency on wpasupplicant. > > Above is the issue reported: I.e. the _possibility_ for using iwd as > alternative. Please relax to only _recommend_ wpasupplicant, to allow (even if not recommend) use with IWD. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private signature.asc Description: signature
Bug#919619: network-manager: should support iwd as wpasupplicant alternative
Quoting Andreas Henriksson (2019-02-03 23:12:37) > Control: severity -1 wishlist Please reconsider the severity, because... > On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 10:09:21PM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: > > network-manager is compiled with support for iwd, > > but the package declares an absolute dependency on wpasupplicant. Above is the issue reported: I.e. the _possibility_ for using iwd as alternative. > Please note that from a "debian stable perspective" iwd should still > be considered "tech preview". Yes. Understood. But similar to our various X11 login managers not _depending_ on stable window managers but at most _recommending those, I beg for same here. > Having said all that, iwd should probably work well for most users. > (But at the same time I'd also recommend keeping wpasupplicant > installed for those cases where you do run into a situation where > you can't connect using iwd and has no other connectivity options > available.) It seems you - literally - agree that we should _recommend_ wpasupplicant. That is what this bug is about: Currently network-manager _depends_ on wpasupplicant which is wrong: In some exotic situations it makes sense to not install wpasupplicant, and network-manager _works_ without wpasupplicant, just less ideal. > > Please add iwd as alternative to wpasupplicant. > > In support of this statement, I'd like to think of potential drawbacks > and try to argue why they aren't problematic. In retrsospect I regret having mentioned above in this same bugreport. Because I agree that _encouraging_ the use of iwd is of severity wishlist and unsuitable for Buster. Please disregard, for the purpose of judging severity of this bugreport at least. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private signature.asc Description: signature
Bug#919619: network-manager: should support iwd as wpasupplicant alternative
Control: severity -1 wishlist Hi, I think this severity is better as wishlist until iwd 1.0 is released with further details below. On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 10:09:21PM +0100, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: > Package: network-manager > Version: 1.14.4-4 > Severity: important [...] > network-manager is compiled with support for iwd, > but the package declares an absolute dependency on wpasupplicant. Please note that from a "debian stable perspective" iwd should still be considered "tech preview". There are no promises about any kind of interface stability until version 1.0 is released (notably the dbus IPC interface which NM uses). See also #911057 related to (the lack of) interface stability promises. There are also a number of features still missing in both iwd and the iwd-plugin of NM before the iwd code-path can compete with and be a full (production-ready) replacement for wpasupplicant. - iwd is still working on implementing support for "complex" wifi setups (and I don't have access to any such networks for testing and evaluation). - network-manager is still missing support for things like connecting to hidden SSIDs while using iwd. Having said all that, iwd should probably work well for most users. (But at the same time I'd also recommend keeping wpasupplicant installed for those cases where you do run into a situation where you can't connect using iwd and has no other connectivity options available.) > > Please add iwd as alternative to wpasupplicant. In support of this statement, I'd like to think of potential drawbacks and try to argue why they aren't problematic. If the dependency was described as 'wpasupplicant | iwd' the only problematic situation I would forsee would be when someone first installed iwd, then later installed NM (and assumed it would drag in the default dependency). Given the total number of users of iwd are currently "almost non-existant" (compared to NM userbase) the cases where the above problem will happen is also thus non-existant. (current numbers according to popcon: 34 installed, 24 vote. See: https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=iwd ) My conclusion is thus that the dependency could likely safely be described as 'wpasupplicant | iwd' to cater for the very small minority (subset) of iwd users who wishes to not have wpasupplicant installed (and prepare for a future where iwd >= 1.0 and NM iwd-plugin is also in better shape). > Also, please consider relaxing to only recommend this combo, > as network-manager is certainly usable without those available, only > (as described when seemingly this was tightened in 0.6.0-1) > "necessary for all encrypted connections." >From my own experience I can tell that there aren't enough volunteers taking on the support burden of downgrading things which could theoretically be recommends instead of depends for very popular and widely used software like NM. There are just too many people still disabling recommends without knowing what they're getting themselves into and then complaining "it's broken". The minority of people who really can't spare the storage space to have wpasupplicant installed while unused (and want to avoid maintaning their own fork of the package) will find the solution here: https://packages.debian.org/unstable/equivs Even if we assume counting the people who want neither would double the number of people who would rather just have iwd, this graph should make it pretty clear why "a minor inconvenience for NM users" far outweighs "a major inconvenience for iwd/none users": https://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php?packages=iwd%2Cnetwork-manager&show_vote=on&want_legend=on&want_ticks=on&from_date=&to_date=&hlght_date=&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1 Even if only 1% (which I'm pretty sure is way to low) of users are in the 'install without recommends and complain'-camp, that's still alot more users than iwd*2. Regards, Andreas Henriksson
Bug#919619: network-manager: should support iwd as wpasupplicant alternative
Package: network-manager Version: 1.14.4-4 Severity: important -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA512 network-manager is compiled with support for iwd, but the package declares an absolute dependency on wpasupplicant. Please add iwd as alternative to wpasupplicant. Also, please consider relaxing to only recommend this combo, as network-manager is certainly usable without those available, only (as described when seemingly this was tightened in 0.6.0-1) "necessary for all encrypted connections." - Jonas -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- iQIzBAEBCgAdFiEEn+Ppw2aRpp/1PMaELHwxRsGgASEFAlxA7v4ACgkQLHwxRsGg ASEFFg/+ONg0Gc6d0G8CeXdVc+AbPfRoVeHUr743lx+fWi80sJU0OkyIvdaoYFZr haXcQmkyCTiGggBud3FRcokPUk30NZqZ7i6h8TfTEzK7YGTx+6eKJCIb1r1D6jIh Mxar8flDDPlz0/tlFybZJdwQlEPxaKNQlC8IuuOC6BtRyjs6Ri5LnV/AJ1HVPoPs XqLvRaMUXlES0Q2I3vEgNSc9+toISfX2bzVNt/5+uWATgZyjdlwWNBhy6WhSKGol hkd/7LLEB1Dmcc2IH+bUZ/Zvz0mZJzhqcHfEY7nDvzkoq9r+IQQslmc0QIqHHKml O2B4oSujp6KyfYdmT+M5mMVzv9dePYyFd4qlR8/J7bqORprWhVZ2mvvN7bwKyJu7 /DGnNMGlWu4nCbPfHtQSG1T0JGK1/R/PadLJVUx3DmIrCK1fF5WEOu3Et2pllafx z/NZn5m/C+4D4IE3y2X78mj81t8m2UVST1IWOWDuS7d3XA7O1nZOF3QDFE5lceta mtD14RFgDa8p9EjQ2YGftptZguUzCM3gahpm9zhTyVnxfIBUNdkBLYo20gCsPbMt B/aiwixnc2Lust+oFYMPcbXFJJObNH8zC7bASzUw3E7otY14SFNYdmU0CtWttNNi SXLwiszcvimbb0HAxwyab0NLuMvjFP/mdBvXylcCo733omGX8pU= =5fu+ -END PGP SIGNATURE-
