Hi, On Fri, 2006-08-11 at 07:50 +0200, Sven Jacobs wrote:
I have some question about (K)NetworkManager on OpenSuSE 10.1. Since I didn't find much and useful documentation of (K)NetworkManager anywhere, I post them here:
1) What exactly is the use of the NM_ONLINE_TIMEOUT setting in /etc/sysconfig/network/config? I ask because it does not work for me. I'm using KDE and the KNetworkManager GUI. When my laptop is booting even though the setting is set to 20 or 30 there still is no wireless connection available when KDE has finished loading.
From /etc/sysconfig/network/config:
231 # When using NetworkManager you may define a timeout to wait for NetworkManager 232 # to connect. Other network services may require the system to have a valid 233 # network setup in order to succeed.
I have a guess why: Because KNetworkManager is using KWallet to store the WPA key, it won't start to connect to my wireless network as long as the KWallet has not been opened (=the KWallet master password has been entered by me). But then again I question the NM_ONLINE_TIMEOUT setting. If my understanding of NetworkManager is correct, it's a daemon with network functionality (collecting available network devices and networks, connect to them) which needs to be controlled via another application (e.g. a NetworkManager GUI) via dbus. So if NetworkManager relies on other applications, why is there a NM_ONLINE_TIMEOUT setting?
You can create wireless networks using YaST to achieve this: Network Devices -> Network Card -> User Controlled with NetworkManager -> Next -> (Choose your wireless card) -> Edit -> (no changes) -> Next -> (Enter the settings for your wireless network) -> Next. This will create a configuration file (/etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-wlan-id-*) for your wireless network. Once NetworkManager is launched, it parses such configuration files. This is the way how you tell NetworkManager to connect to a wireless network without having one of the graphical front-ends (nm-tool, KNetworkManager) running. NM_ONLINE_TIMEOUT makes perfectly sense for wired connections. For wireless connections NM_ONLINE_TIMEOUT only makes sense if you have a wireless network configured as described above.
2) Following up my last question: What do I have to do so that NM_ONLINE_TIMEOUT actually works? Do I have to store the connection information somewhere else, maybe in a global configuration file of NetworkManager? I want the wireless connection up and running when KDE loads so that Kopete, KMail and other networking applications don't complain every first time that they cannot connect to some server.
I guess everything should be set if you follow the above steps. Timo