Re: [gentoo-user] recent trouble with wicd and systemd (non-global ctrl_ifname)

[Alan McKinnon]

On 13/12/2013 14:57, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 1:59 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote:
>> On 13/12/2013 00:47, Canek Peláez Valdés wrote:
>>> On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 4:52 PM,  <gottlieb@×××.edu> wrote:
>>>> At home I use a wired connection so did notice the following problem
>>>> until I traveled and tried to connect wirelessly.
>>>> The problem must have started sometime within the past month.
>>>>
>>>> If I have wicd started by systemd, i.e.
>>>> systemctl enable wicd
>>>> The wired network is started fine but not the wireless.  Instead, I see
>>>> in the systemd journal
>>>>
>>>> wicd[290]: Failed to connect to non-global ctrl_ifname: wired  error: No
>>>> such file or directory
>>>> wicd[290]: Failed to connect to non-global ctrl_ifname: wireless  error: No
>>>> such file or directory
>>>>
>>>> If I instead systemctl disable wicd, reboot, and then manually type
>>>> wpa_supplicant -i wireless -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -B
>>>> it works.
>>>>
>>>> Indeed after I have booted I can start wicd and cannot get the error
>>>> above, but the actual behavior is not consistent.
>>>>
>>>> My system is ~amd64, profile gnome/systemd
>>>>
>>>> My wireless driver is from the package broadcom-sta (wl)
>>>
>>> I have never used wicd, so I can't say exactly what it's the problem;
>>> but I was under the impression that wicd is basically dead. Its last
>>> release was more than a year and a half ago.
>>>
>>> Regards.
>>>
>>
>> release more than a year and a half ago != dead
>
> In this particular case I think it is.
>
>> the code the user has still works whether the devs adds upstream commits
>> or not.
>
> Well, apparently not [1].
>
>> It hasn't bit-rooted, is not incompatible with everything else and
>> doesn't have outstanding security bugs with little chance of being fixed.
>
> Checking [1] and [2], I would think that wicd satisfies (or *at least*
> starts to satisfy) the very definition of bitrot.
>
>> So what's the problem?
>
> If the code worked perfectly, none. But apparently it doesn't; I don't
> know, I don't use it myself. The usual signs of bitrot are there,
> though.
>
>> By that logic, zenity needs to have died 5 years ago but it's still around
>
> That's a really bad example. Zenity didn't had a 3.10 release, but it
> had a 3.8 [3] in march, so it's 9 months since the last release, not
> 18. Also, now zenity has a 3_10 tag in git [4]. And lastly, its lats
> commit was 6 days ago, and it had several bugfixes committed not three
> weeks ago [5]. On the other hand, wicd only has had translations
> committed in the last 6 *months* [6], and the "development" branch for
> 2.0 hasn't been touched in *3 years* [7].
>
> This is only after a quick search through wicd and zenity repositories
> (and Gentoo bugzilla). Perhaps wicd has reached perfection and it
> doesn't need an upstream since everything simply works and there is
> nothing else to do with it. That would be a first in software history,
> though.
>
> I would simply not use it, and I will recommend any of its users to
> change to either NetworkManager [8] or connman [9], like pronto.
>
> [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/wicd/+bugs
> [2] https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=486440
> [3] ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/zenity/3.8/
> [4] https://git.gnome.org/browse/zenity/tag/?id=ZENITY_3_10_0
> [5] https://git.gnome.org/browse/zenity/log/
> [6] https://code.launchpad.net/~wicd-devel/wicd/experimental
> [7] https://code.launchpad.net/~wicd-devel/wicd/aqua
> [8] http://projects.gnome.org/NetworkManager/
> [9] https://connman.net/
>
> Regards.
>


I'm not convinced, your evidence is rather under-whelming.

Yes, wicd is currently in need of a maintainer and some simple fixes per
your [1] are not being applied. But on the whole the code works for the
majority of folks, I can't find any outstanding CVEs and I don't see how
you can qualify this as needing to not be used. YMMV, yes, but don't use
it? Nah, I can't see a legitimate case.

As for zenity, it appears someone has stepped up to the plate in recent
months, but I clearly recall it being mostly abandoned for years. I
needed it for winetricks as the alternative kdialog is just ... poor.
But zenity couldn't be gotten to work at all. If we'd applied your POV
towards wicd to zenity, see where I'm going?

As for network-manager, we have years of history on this very mailing
list of people reporting problems getting it to work in anything but
simple straightforward cases. In so many of these cases, switching to
wicd fixed the issue. In all that time, you are the only person that
comes to mind often claiming that nm works great for them. Based on that
alone, I classify nm as "meh software" which might work but all too
often doesn't.

As for connman, it works great on my phone but my limited experience
with it on desktops was similar to nm.

Admittedly both nm and connman might have improved by leaps and bounds
in recent months and perhaps they are now awesome, but I don't see it.

Just call wicd for what it really is at this point: ymmv



-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@×××××.com