On Wed, 2008-07-02 at 16:30 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>
> >> But this was a specific, concrete query.
> >> Why does NM wait until the user has logged in to start?
> >
> > That's a wrong assumption. NM doesn't wait until the user has started.
> > It is a system service which starts at boot. nm-applet(GNOME) or
> > Knetworkmanager (KDE) is just a frontend to the system service called
> > NM. It is possible to write a console frontend to do a similar task for
> > the non-desktop case but NM atleast initially was designed to make
> > wireless network access easier. It has grown additional functionality
> > over time however.
>
> Sorry, Rahul, you have lost me here.
> When I say that NM waits until the user logs in
> I mean that NetworkManager does not connect me to my AP
> until I login.
> Therefore any application that requires me to be connected
> has to wait until I login.
> This doesn't worry me particularly, but it does puzzle me.
>
> I am asking the reason for this delay.
> Perhaps if there was some minimal documentation for NM this might be clear.
>
> The standard network service, on the rare occasions when it works for me,
> does not wait for me to login.
Think about how accessing wireless systems works. If you have to
authenticate, then you have to be logged in to do it (or you have to
preconfigure it). If you are a mobile user, you may have to do it
several times--NM makes the process about as convenient as possible.
Authentication should be tied to a user: user A should not necessarily
be able to authenticate to user B's WAP unless user A also knows the
key. (Apropos another thread, that's why the keyring is used to store
encrypted keys.)
NM was originally designed primarily for mobile machines that may
connect to many different networks or no network, so management by a
logged-in user is a reasonable assumption. The F9 NM supposedly also
has the ability to set system-level access parameters (including static
IPs) and connect at boot, but that mostly makes sense for workstations
and servers. (I'm still running F8, so I haven't figured out how to do
it yet.)
>
>
>
--
Matthew Saltzman
Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs
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