You don't need to create wpa_supplicant.conf if you use wicd. It does everything for you on its own. Yes, it does take away a bit of control from the back end, but if you need many wireless "profiles" it's a time saver to use it rather than have to edit the wpa_supplicant.conf and invoke it manually.

Only if you plan to invoke the wpa_supplicant script manually you need to create the file.

Ok, thanks very much!

Also note that wicd runs its own daemon as a background process when you boot. So if you use multiple network managers, you will get problems if they try to access the same resources (e.g. ifconfig, iwconfig etc)

Thanks for the information!

Just so people know: I managed to get online using the wicd GUI, though I still can't get it to connect automatically to networks by itself on boot. That's ok, though. I'll give it another go when 13 is released, because I don't really need it too much right now.

Thanks all for your help.

I've installed Slackware64 -current RC2 and have an xfce desktop up. In the past, I've just installed Wicd (which I have on flash drive, 1.5.9 noarch), rebooted and all was well. I can't get Wicd to even run now.....what am I missing here? I can't run a cable....thanks !!

Add yourself to the "netdev" group to use wicd.

Eric

thanks Eric...I was trying to do this in between 'working' and was drawing a total blank

Hi nylex

I'm facing the exact same prob as you as my wee eeepc is used at home, work and on public open networks. My original solution was to create rc.inet1.conf files for each and manually run a script that took one arg home|work|open which copied the aapropriate file and then reran rc.inet1. The script also configured my monitors, mounted drives and started relevant services. It made life v easy despite being a slightly inelegant solution. I suppose I could improve it by looking at iwlist ra0 scan for what ssids were present and by calling it from rc.local, but life is short...

Am playing with wicd in 13rc2 now and liking it.

Anyway, interested to hear how you get on....

Eric...I was already in the netdev group. When I launched wicd from the terminal, i.e. wicd-client, I would get a "wpath module not found error".

Also, my wireless card was not being turned like it was in 12.2 stable. The ucode is in xx/firmware. Something is going on here... thanks for any advice.

@mcnalu: thanks for the input on this!

I'm running wicd on Slackware 13.0 now and I seem to be able to connect to my (WEP) wireless network. I've only got one stanza in wireless-settings.conf, so hopefully it will still work with multiple networks. I'm not really sure what the solution was, because I've tried various things. However, I think it involved having the line

enctype = wep-hex

in the network stanza and commenting out the line

encryption_method = WEP

Thanks.