Re: [gentoo-user] WPA2 connection configuration?

[Mick]

On Tuesday 27 Sep 2011 12:19:06 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Sep 2011 18:43:13 -0700
> Mark Knecht <markknecht@×××××.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 5:14 PM, Alan McKinnon
> > <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote:
> > > On Tue, 27 Sep 2011 07:08:05 +0700

> >   Reading the wicd homepage it looks like it could help, but how many
> > hours am I going to have to invest to get it running? Understand that
> > I've already dumped maybe 10 hours into getting here. I figure I'll
> > need another 10 hours of work - reading web pages, trying things out
> > and failing - before I feel like I should ask a question here, so
> > that's 20 hours minimum. Please understand that wireless was working
> > on this machine in Windows in under 10 minutes - not 20 hours!

Well, it could as little as 10 minutes to configure the /etc/conf.d scripts, 
for a particular AP (less than a minute if you've done it before) although it 
could take as long as 20 hours if you *want* to become expert at the most 
convoluted configurations.


> Windows does it the right way for a mobile workstation, and wicd
> follows the same general idea.

I am not sure that the vanilla scripts are much different to be honest (except 
that they don't come with a GUI).


> At boot-up , a wicd daemon starts, this is the thing that does the
> heavy lifting and runs as root.
>
> When the user's DE starts, you run the wicd-client. It comes with a
> sensible config dialog where you set sensible stuff like
> wired interface takes priority over wireless
> use wireless APs that have been sen before in preference to new ones
> buttons to define pre-and post-connect scripts if you need them
> when the client has decided what it's gonna do with your connections,
> it requests the daemon to do it. It's all very well-thought out and
> obviously designed with the needs of laptop users in mind. Sort of like
> NetworkManager working properly without the issues of NetworkManager.

I have used NetworkManager in Kubuntu, but don't recall having any problems 
with it.


> For me, it all just worked out of the box and connected every time to
> all APS - WEP, WPA, even the weird funky corporate BS thingy someone
> installed at work. Took about 10 minutes :-)

Same here with the gentoo scripts and wpa_cli, or wpa_gui - should I fancy a 
GUI to look at.


Obviously wicd seems to be more user friendly than fiddling around with init.d 
scripts and permutations, but in my head it's just a front end to such scripts 
and wpa_supplicant . . .  Have I got this wrong?


PS.  I'm not advocating the use of anything other than the tool that suits 
each user - thankfully Gentoo still gives us options in this area.  ;-)
-- 
Regards,
Mick