Re: [DNG] state of what's working for modern desktop usage

[KatolaZ]

On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 03:41:38PM +, hellekin wrote:
> On 02/10/2016 07:20 AM, Didier Kryn wrote:
> >>>
>  Sorry I missed that, does it handle wifi roaming?
> >
> > It means you can transport your laptop to whichever place there is a
> > wifi ap (which you have entered once in your config) and your laptop
> > will automatically connect to the network, without you having to even
> > care about it.
> > 
> 
> Which doesn't seem to be reliable with wicd.  Did anyone else have this
> experience?
> 

I have always had problems with wicd, for a reason or another. wicd
might be convenient to set up on-the-fly connections that you don't
use all the time (e.g., a wifi access in a public place), but then
there is always something that goes wrong, e.g. when an AP goes in and
out of sight: in that case wicd will try and retry to find the
previous AP, then it could try another AP with the same ESSID (if you
checked the right box in the conf panel), then it will jump back and
fro choosing the AP with the same ESSID and the best signal. 

Result: you might be literally bombarded by good-quality 2.4Ghz
elecromagnetic waves that you could exploit to access the Internet,
but you usually remain stuck for several minutes in a row without
being able to use such wealthy abundance of electromagnetic waves just
because wicd has to update its bloody list of available APs four or
five times in a row, and has to do a round-robin associate-disconnect
to check which is the best one among the available ones

My solution: just forget wicd and use wpa_supplicant directly. It
works ALWAYS, without delays, without stupid automagicalities, without
problems.

My2Cents

KatolaZ

-- 
[ Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ --- GLUG Catania -- Freaknet Medialab ]
[ me [at] katolaz.homeunix.net -- http://katolaz.homeunix.net -- ]
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Re: [DNG] state of what's working for modern desktop usage

[Didier Kryn]

Le 09/02/2016 21:14, Mitt Green a écrit :

   Steve Litt wrote:


Are you running wpa_supplicant as a daemon? Excluding passwords,
what does your wpa_supplicant.conf look like?


[...]

Are you running dhcpcd as a daemon? What is the command line?

[...]

I mentioned here once, that I use a simple script for connecting
to our local wireless network.

-

$ cat .wifi
# wpa_supplicant initialisation script

echo "Connecting to the wireless network, please wait..."

# Start wpa_supplicant
wpa_supplicant -B -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

# Provide Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
dhcpcd wlan0

--


wpa_supplicant.conf is very simple:

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
 network={
 ssid="yourssid"
 psk="yourpsk"
}




dhcpcd is a daemon itself, hence the name
(DHCP client daemon).
I saw your message about NetworkManager that modifies

resolv.conf, dhcpcd does it by default, unless you put
"nohook resolv.conf" to /etc/dhcpcd.conf.


Cheers,
Mitt
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No roaming so :-(

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Re: [DNG] state of what's working for modern desktop usage

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 09 Feb 2016 15:01:44 +0300
Mitt Green  wrote:

>   Didier Kryn wrote:
> 
> >In the mean time, wpagui is working fine [...]  
> 
> wpagui uses Qt, there's no need to pull tons of
> packages for one programme, as long as dhcpcd-ui
> exists for those who prefer graphical interfaces.
> As I stated previously, in my case wpa_supplicant
> and dhcpcd work fine together.

Some questions:

Are you running wpa_supplicant as a daemon? Excluding passwords, what
does your wpa_supplicant.conf look like?

Are you running dhcpcd as a daemon? What is the command line?

If you're not running dhcpcd as a daemon, what is the command line?

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt 
February 2016 featured book: The Key to Everyday Excellence
http://www.troubleshooters.com/key
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Re: [DNG] state of what's working for modern desktop usage

[Mitt Green]

  Steve Litt wrote:

>Are you running wpa_supplicant as a daemon? Excluding passwords,
>what does your wpa_supplicant.conf look like?


[...]
>Are you running dhcpcd as a daemon? What is the command line?
[...]

I mentioned here once, that I use a simple script for connecting
to our local wireless network.

-

$ cat .wifi
# wpa_supplicant initialisation script

echo "Connecting to the wireless network, please wait..."

# Start wpa_supplicant
wpa_supplicant -B -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

# Provide Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
dhcpcd wlan0

--


wpa_supplicant.conf is very simple:

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
network={
ssid="yourssid"
psk="yourpsk"
}




dhcpcd is a daemon itself, hence the name
(DHCP client daemon).
I saw your message about NetworkManager that modifies

resolv.conf, dhcpcd does it by default, unless you put
"nohook resolv.conf" to /etc/dhcpcd.conf.


Cheers,
Mitt
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Re: [DNG] state of what's working for modern desktop usage

[Florian Zieboll]

On Tue, 09 Feb 2016 09:15:28 +0100
shraptor  wrote:

> It is my belief that vdev should go in some testing or development
> repo.

If there are free capacities on the build infrastructure, it would make
testing much more appealing to have an unofficial (pre)alpha or "lab"
repository for Jessie. I just don't feel like recompiling short-lived
testing stuff on my ancient machines here every few time units, when I
know that there are binaries around anyway.

Some notes on a possibly necessary migration from the traditional setup
and a list of interesting / untested / critical scenarios would be
nice, too. Perhaps as "release notes" - that would be very handy in
combination with apt-listchanges.

BTW, I don't have a fancy setup here, but can offer to play with debs
for amd64. Some headless testing on x86, armhf and perhaps armel is
possible as well. 

Florian

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Re: [DNG] state of what's working for modern desktop usage

[Harald Arnesen]

Steve Litt [2016-02-09 17:24]:

> I use wpa_gui every time I take one of my laptops on the road, and I
> get it to work, but I wouldn't call its functionality "working fine."
> First of all, its human interface is ridiculous. Instead of conversing
> with the human at human level and translating for wpa_supplicant, it
> converses with wpa_supplicant at wpa_supplicant level and makes the
> human translate. The thing where you have to go to another tab, press
> scan, press scan again, doubleclick, remember the number of the new
> network, go back to the first tab, select it, and wait for your IP
> address (or not) is ridiculous.

Maybe so with Linux (I use wicd with my Linux laptops), but it works out
of the box with PC-BSD.
-- 
Hilsen Harald
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Re: [DNG] state of what's working for modern desktop usage

[KatolaZ]

On Tue, Feb 09, 2016 at 09:22:15PM +0100, Florian Zieboll wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Feb 2016 11:24:38 -0500
> Steve Litt  wrote:
> 
> > For the reasons I enumerated above. I don't use NetworkManager because
> > it's too much baggage, but I have to admit, its human-engineering is
> > spectacular **on a window manager with a panel**.
> 
> 
> If you just need it for e.g. an occasional mobile connection, stalonetray is 
> perfect.
> 

I have to admit how much I envy you all guys. I have tried dozens of
those automagical tools for wifi connection management, but in the end
I always ended up using wpa_supplicant (with hand-written custom
config files) + dhclient. There is no tool that does just "connect me
to a wifi that I select" without forcing me, sooner or later, to do
more work than needed with wpa_supplicant + dhclient :(

Life is tough, here in the cave... :D

HND

KatolaZ

-- 
[ Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ --- GLUG Catania -- Freaknet Medialab ]
[ me [at] katolaz.homeunix.net -- http://katolaz.homeunix.net -- ]
[ GNU/Linux User:#325780/ICQ UIN: #258332181/GPG key ID 0B5F062F ]
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Re: [DNG] state of what's working for modern desktop usage

[Simon Wise]

On 10/02/16 10:26, KatolaZ wrote:

On Tue, Feb 09, 2016 at 09:22:15PM +0100, Florian Zieboll wrote:

On Tue, 9 Feb 2016 11:24:38 -0500
Steve Litt  wrote:


For the reasons I enumerated above. I don't use NetworkManager because
it's too much baggage, but I have to admit, its human-engineering is
spectacular **on a window manager with a panel**.



If you just need it for e.g. an occasional mobile connection, stalonetray is 
perfect.



I have to admit how much I envy you all guys. I have tried dozens of
those automagical tools for wifi connection management, but in the end
I always ended up using wpa_supplicant (with hand-written custom
config files) + dhclient. There is no tool that does just "connect me
to a wifi that I select" without forcing me, sooner or later, to do
more work than needed with wpa_supplicant + dhclient :(

Life is tough, here in the cave... :D


I'll second that ... I gave up fighting with the GUIs a long time ago, I needed 
to set up quite specific LAN stuff and this was out of their range of 
capabilities, they messed horribly with manual stuff and had to be purged..


I had come from OSX and older Apple OSes, this is about 15 years ago, and learnt 
the manual setups required by simply watching what their GUI did behind the 
scenes. What OSX had set up automagically was easily transferred to linux as the 
toolchain is very similar. No linux GUI ever got even remotely close to OSX. 
Seriously when you want a fully automagical GUI desktop with big corporate 
backing and the market penetration to compel enough hardware manufacturers and 
software merchants to jump on the gravy train, and your computer activities are 
as the user of the common multi-media or office applications ... and you can 
find the cash ... use OSX, you will save yourself a lot of bother.


All my networking is configured in a very small number of files, and some 
one-line scripts with keybindings make switching to a particular network easy.


Ceni has been very useful, to detect hotspots etc and write the config stanza 
for me, then I can always label and/or modify it if required.



Simon
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Re: [DNG] state of what's working for modern desktop usage

[Didier Kryn]

Le 10/02/2016 08:10, Steve Litt a écrit :

On Tue, 09 Feb 2016 21:11:05 +0300
Mitt Green  wrote:


‎  Didier Kryn wrote:


Sorry I missed that, does it handle wifi roaming?

It doesn't do more than wpa_supplicant and dhcpcd.
And has its spawn in a notification tray.

Exactly what is wifi roaming, anyway?

SteveT

Steve Litt
February 2016 featured book: The Key to Everyday Excellence
http://www.troubleshooters.com/key

It means you can transport your laptop to whichever place there is 
a wifi ap (which you have entered once in your config) and your laptop 
will automatically connect to the network, without you having to even 
care about it.


Didier

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Re: [DNG] state of what's working for modern desktop usage

[Steve Litt]

On Tue, 9 Feb 2016 23:26:52 +
KatolaZ  wrote:

 
> I have to admit how much I envy you all guys. I have tried dozens of
> those automagical tools for wifi connection management, but in the end
> I always ended up using wpa_supplicant (with hand-written custom
> config files) + dhclient. There is no tool that does just "connect me
> to a wifi that I select" without forcing me, sooner or later, to do
> more work than needed with wpa_supplicant + dhclient :(
> 
> Life is tough, here in the cave... :D

I've been experimenting with a wpa_supplicant daemon and wpa_cli
commands for a fair part of the day. I'm thinking perhaps I can someday
make one of those automagical tools out of wpa_cli, ip, dialog, grep,
cut, and the rest of the usual suspects. And I mean perhaps make
something that, from the human interface perspective, looks just like
NetworkManager, but is CLI (dialog) and needs no dbus, no window
manager, and no "the software that shall not be mentioned".

SteveT

Steve Litt 
February 2016 featured book: The Key to Everyday Excellence
http://www.troubleshooters.com/key
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[DNG] state of what's working for modern desktop usage

[Sylvain BERTRAND]

Hi,

From a debian jessie 8.3 with gnome I did an upgrade to devuan, but I got many 
issues:
  - I had to remove manually systemd once rebooted
  - An apt autoremove actually did remove all gnome.

Then from a desktop perspective, what should I expect to work? I'm targetting
usage level similar to gnome regarding network configuration, mounting of
removal medias and digital camera, etc etc...

(Since I saw that gnome was basically removed, I did install xfce, but without
network since networkmanager is gone along with gnome)

I noticed too that no vdev were installed, expected?

regards,

-- 
Sylvain
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