Re: NetworkManager update

Gene Heskett wrote:

On Friday 28 April 2006 12:24, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
[...]

I apologize, I completely misread which mailing list you were
referring to, and I haven't been reading that list closely enough to
see your thread there and connect it back to this one.  Must have
been tired when I responded.

We both were I suspect.

I see you do indeed seem to be operating hardware that requires
interaction of a number of different, independently developed,
bleeding edge bits--ndiswrapper and the closed-source driver for your

card, the open-source driver for your card, NetworkManager, etc. That will require patience and time and interacting with the

developers.

ability to get clear back down to the basics in starting to solve a
problem seems to have gotten lost in the assumption that 'everyone
knows about that' when we don't always.  And I don't think I'm being
out of line all that much when I do attempt to draw a picture of
what I've got hardware wise, and describe what isn't working without
spending 4 paragraphs per piece of hardware in the path, and failing
to do so in a manner that allows those who might be able answer my
question, because they are lost at turn two in an 8 turn road course
I've tried to describe.

Thats my fault to a certain extent of course, and I tend to bypass
whats important to others because I've been there and done that and
I see that particular item as already checked and unimportant.  But
it leads to others being confused because my train of thought tends
to jump around depending on the clues. I've spent the majority of my
71 years fixing electronics things for a living, and I don't always
understand that others don't jump to the answers from what limited
info I've got, but I can because after 55 years, you get a sense of
smell & feeling that lets you bypass the intermediate steps others
would use to confirm, and I've been right often enough that one
person, watching me work, wanted to know if I had webbed feet
because surely I was walking on water as far as he was concerned.

Well, understanding that about yourself, you can understand how
developers can get into the same mindset.  They have the benefit of
knowledge about the field they're working in as well, and it is all
too easy to act as though everyone has the same knowledge framework
as you do.

But to effectively work with a diverse group of specialists such as
the driver authors and the ndiswrapper authors and the NM and
wpa_supplicant authors, you will need to (a) get out of that mindset
yourself and be disciplined about gathering evidence and working your
way through the process and (b) encourage the developers you are
working with to get out of their mindset and communicate with you
enough so that you reach common understanding.  As I said, patience
and perseverance are needed.

True, and a nice thing to have if one has essentially unlimited time. I thought I did, having bought this lappy 3 weeks before the day I leave on this trip, but thats pretty much evaporated, rather silently it seems, now.

For example, if you want to try the open-source driver for your card
(the best long-run solution), you'll need to learn to build and
install kernel modules.

If its any help, on this machine I'm running 2.6.16.11, and I've probably built and run half the kernels that have come out of the Torvalds camp over the last 4-5 years. I have some scripts that take the majority of the drudgery out of that, and I can usually dl a new patch, put it in, build and install it and reboot to it in less than 20 minutes wall time.

And you'll need to fight through the lack of documentation while encouraging people to solve that problem (and

maybe even contributing yourself).

Well, one thing that puzzled me all through this was I kept seeing references to wpa_supplicant in connection with NM, but no one said what it does till an earlier today message. And guess what? FC5 doesn't enable that puppy by default. I just turned it on and started it, and it doesn't seem to effect a working network ATM, and it might be the reason NM has never asked me for a key, its probably not NM that asks for the key, I'd bet its wpa_supplicant that actually does that. And of course if its not running, then NM hasn't a clue what todo about a missing key. Right? Some Real Docs would be nice, very nice :(

Unforch, that 'intuition' seems to be fading as I get into the 7th
decade.  And I should have used "subscribed" rather than "trolling"
above, but thats what I feel I'm doing, throwing out a line and
trolling for nibbles.

Sure, although "trolling" here usually refers to deliberate attempts
to incite flame wars--not your intention, I'm sure.

That often depends on the tone of the post. I have been known to inspect tonsil conditions a few times. :) Generally I'm not trolling in the interest of starting a fight, I know full well I'm not 10 feet tall and bulletproof like I *thought* I was 50 years ago. OTOH, I still haven't got enough common sense to run when the fight comes to me either. The net result being that most pretty well know which side of a scrap I'll be rooting for, on those lists where I have been active for extended periods of time & that goes clear back to the coco list on Delphi in the 80's. :-)

--
  Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs

-Dan