iwlist wlan0 scan shows wireless networks but NetworkManager in gnome shows nothing under wireless networks. Anyone know of information on how to configure the networkmanager or what it does under the hood? Like I assume its running some scripts or... I heard it used iwlib and I see that its opened libiwlib.so.29, but... should that work or not work or...

I would suggest to install wicd

Well I could, but specifically here I'm trying to figure out how to fix the NetworkManager. I mean if I stopped using every piece of software that shipped with debian/gnome that didn't quite work how I wanted it to out of the box, then what's the point of even using debian/gnome at all.

If you have manually configured a network interface in your /etc/network/interfaces file, then network-manager ignores the interface.. at least that has been my experience with network-manager. I basically ignore network manager as being useless icon in the corner of my screen, (that I should probably just un-install) since I manually configure pretty much all of my networking. Network manager is incapable of even telling me if my network cable is plugged in because of this..

I found wicd to be a much more useful front end for wired / wireles configuration that network manager.
(not to mention network-manager does NOT work with the wireless card/drivers in my netbook, but wicd does.. )

network-manager originated from redhat/fedora if I'm not mistaken.. so blaming Debian/Gnome doesn't help

I've never had much luck with Network-Manager. In fact, it generally seems to make things worse, so I usually delete it from a new installation. In theory, it should help when running a laptop from multiple locations. In practice, it just seems to mess with configuration settings and confuse itself. It just seems to be more trouble than it is worth to me. I realize the network configuration, specifically wireless, is a big problem for new Linux users, and it would be great to have a auto-configuration that "just works", N-M doesn't seem to be it, in my experience. I haven't tried wicd.

Once you figure out the /etc/network/interfaces configuration file, I think you'll find it works pretty well.

That was indeed it. I had an essid and password set in /etc/network/interfaces and instead I needed just "auto wlan0" and "iface wlan0 dhcp".

After this, network manager in lenny does show the wireless networks as options to connect to although "edit wireless networks" shows nothing, but maybe its not supposed to.

Unfortunately, I still can't connect because its an apple airport wireless network with a passphrase and I've tried various passphrase conversion utilities but I still don't get an ip from using iwconfig, (which says passphrases are unsupported). Network manager just sits there if I try to connect even though it has a field for passphrase.

-

I remember maybe 6 months ago I just disabled NetworkManager outright because I was annoyed with it. But so I'm confused. It seems like whenever I "go off the reservation" and try to compile a lot of stuff by source, it starts to conflict more and more with debian and its packages. And if I go on irc or something, people just say "well you should only use packages, its your fault, we're not going to help you".

When I first started using linux, I compiled everything from source and was reasonably happy. But I guess this time, I'm just too busy and I would prefer a working configured system and package management. I feel like I'm too old to screw around with all of this stuff. So I tried to do a combination of source and packages and it screwed my system up in a hurry. So I reinstalled from scratch and have been conscientious about trying to use mainly the package management system except for very particular situations.

But so something like NetworkManager... I mean its a simple utility. And its like, I compile my own stuff, and debian people tell me that I shouldn't. But then you guys are telling me to ditch Debian's network management program... and whatever about where it came from, I know redhat wouldn't be any different.

network-manager is buggy piece of crap that should be removed from the debian repos. Try using wicd or wifi-radar instead.


or just do it from console with iwlist .

Network-Manager isn't Debians utility, it's a general utility that is part of gnome suite of default utilities.. but like all things Linux you are not restricted to a single choice.. You can choose to uninstall network-manager, and install wicd from a Debian package and see if it works for you. (wicd is only available as apackage for lenny and sid at this time and a number of versions of Ubuntu)

Just because it's the default doesn't make it the only or best choice.

Personally I found using Debian I rarely ever have to compile anything other than some driver occasionaly, or a software application that is not in the repositories.. I avoid compiling anything that is alibrary or part o the system. anything system related comes from the repositories.

If Debian Etch doesn't have software versions that are new enough for what I want to do, I upgrade the system to Debian Lenny and stick with that branch. Lenny is all around more up to date than Etch so you gain newer versions of packages, updated drivers, and a few more applications that are not available in the etch repositories by default.

Best of luck in your search..

I do not see wicd under lenny in synaptic.

Also, anyone know of anyone who has connected to a passphrased apple airport wireless network?

http://wicd.sourceforge.net/download.php


Airport...

http://www.symphonious.net/2005/12/1...rport-and-you/

interesting...

Nevermind...

As for apple, yeah I've read that their key encoding algorithms are different but I still can't connect for some reason. I'll probably try again in a few days.

Hi!

I have installed WICD on Debian and I have the same problem as Peterius: after installing WICD, I can now access a new a Network Manager screen, which did not exist before, but it does not display/detect any wireless networks. It is like dead. Before installing WICD I did at least have a wireless WPE encrypted network, which was detected, although it often disconnected for no known reasons. Now even that Network has gone and I can't go on line. Can anybody help here? Would I have perhaps to reconfigure the Router settings to setup/connect to a network in Debian? May be I have to do this, because Tor/Vidalia changes my IP address and so my Network Adapter ( Linksys) can no longer connect to the router.
Also, when trying to follow troubleshooting leads in this connection, the Terminal screen on Debian ( CMD) would often return a PERMISSIONS DENIED message.

Thank you

Franco

@ittiandro
For my installation of wicd, I would need to manually add the wireless interface into the preference and do a refresh before getting any wireless network listing, ie.
-> click wicd
-> click preference
-> type your interface name into box named wireless interface
-> in my case the wireless interface is wlan0