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

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 8:24 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote:
> 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.

(Sorry it took me so long to answer, I was away from my computers).

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

It seems you are the only one saying that.

> 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.

You say "it works for the majority of folks". Where do you get that?
NM is the default network manager for GNOME, and I think at least the
most popular with KDE (if not the default), and therefore it's the one
used by the "majority" of folks. Search for bugs related to
netwokrmanager *recently*; it just works for the "majority" of folks.

Recommending wicd (which is not maintained for all practical purposes)
instead of NM doesn't seem to be a very smart thing to do. I will
always recommend people that they should use maintained software; and
if they really want to keep an old piece of code working, that they
should step up to the plate and take over maintaining it.
,
> 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?

Either I'm not understanding you, or you are not making any sense:
zenity is maintained. It has no trivial and not translation commits
going in in the last few days. wicd has no such things in *months*.

I don't know what you "recall"; fact is zenity was never abandoned. It
had tarballs for basically all 2.x GNOME releases, and it missed 3.10,
but it has recent commits. Don't trust your memory (I know I don't
trust mine); check the repositories: I just cloned zenity's, and it
has tags for almost every GNOME release, it only misses 1.2, 1.7,
2.25, 2.29, 3.3 and 3.5. Also, it has a gap between 1.8 and 2.5, but
if you check the commit logs, it was a bump from 1.8 to 2.5 so it was
in sync with GNOME version numbers.

So you memory is completely wrong: zenity was *NEVER* "abandoned for
years". Historical records preserved with strong cryptography trumps
any fuzzy memory.

> 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.

We have talked about this before; that *some* people had troubles with
NM years ago means *nothing* now. Fact is, NM is the most used network
manager in Linux for desktop and laptop users (embedded and servers
are another beast), and the *majority* of people doesn't have any
problems with it. Just as with PulseAudio, NM uncovered some bugs and
inconsistencies in network drivers on the Linux stack (most of the
time not even related to NM at all), and at the beginning some people
erroneously attributed the problems to NM. That's all.

Instead wicd is bitrotten software, and it seems that no one thinks
it's even worth to try to salvage it.

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

I haven't ever used connman; I mentioned it because at least is maintained it.

> 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.

In recent years, Alan, not months: your memory is wrong again. Once
more, when was the last problem related to NM reported in this list? I
saw a few days ago that the notification icon in GNOME was not
updated, but that's a problem with nm-applet, not NM directly. And
it's a cosmetic problem, besides.

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

I will call wicd for that it is, now that I did even more research:
wicd is bitrotten software that no one wants to bring back to life
since we have so much better alternatives, primary among them
NetworkManager. I don't think anybody should use it, much less
recommend it. I think desktop and laptop users should stop using it,
and switch to NetworkManager, or perhaps connman, since that one is at
least maintained it.

Regards.
-- 
Canek Peláez Valdés
Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México