Bugzilla – Bug 458933
knetworkmanager doesn't refresh wireless networks correctly
Last modified: 2010-01-25 16:55:32 UTC
Created attachment 259936 [details] screenshot of knetworkmanager and iwlist scan results As the attached screenshot shows, even when the 'Refresh automatically' box is checked in the 'New Connection' dialog window of KDE4's knetworkmanager, it doesn't automatically refresh and show all available ESSIDs. Closing the 'New Connection' dialog window and reopening seems to force a refresh, but some ESSIDs never appear at all. For example, in the screenshot you can see the 'qx2c3v4b5' wireless network in every iwlist scan, but no matter what I do I cannot get it to appear in knetworkmanager (this is rather unfortunate since it is my own wireless network!) The hardware is a Dell Latitude D600 with a Broadcom BCM4309 rev 02. Full info about this wireless network: Cell 02 - Address: 00:14:BF:64:F4:20 ESSID:"qx2c3v4b5" Mode:Master Channel:2 Frequency:2.417 GHz (Channel 2) Quality=60/100 Signal level:-60 dBm Noise level=-67 dBm Encryption key:on Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s Extra:tsf=0000006499f7a181 Extra: Last beacon: 580ms ago So it is not on channel 12/13/14 which I understand from the release notes would cause problems.
Created attachment 259937 [details] /var/log/NetworkManager As requested by http://en.opensuse.org/Tracking_down_wireless_problems#Which_logs_are_needed
Created attachment 259938 [details] output of dmesg As requested by http://en.opensuse.org/Tracking_down_wireless_problems#Which_logs_are_needed
See also bug #444733.
Apologies - it turns out that I was using the KDE3 knetworkmanager of 11.1, not KDE4. It looks very different to the one in 10.3 and earlier (I never used 11.0) so I had assumed it was the KDE4 rewrite. The bug still stands though; adjusting bugzilla fields accordingly...
Worth mentioning the ESSID "qx2c3v4b5" is *not* hidden.
Helmut , can you look at the bug?
Hi Helmut, I have quite a lot of debugging experience so if you could help me understand how NetworkManager receives wireless network scan info from the underlying wireless layer then maybe there is a way of debugging the interface between the two which I can try? Thanks!
Adam, could you please verify if nm-tool lists the ssid "qx2c3v4b5"?
Created attachment 260134 [details] screenshot of nm-tool output with New Connections dialog It does; the attached screenshot shows the discrepancies.
Any update on this? My friend just installed a fresh 11.1 and also sees this.
Not really. I did not have time to fix that bug yet :(
I also see this (and other knetworkmanager/wireless showstoppers) on SLED 11.
KNetworkManager for KDE3 is not maintained any longer. Therefore I resolve all bugs that are still open as WONTFIX without looking at each single bug report. If this bug deals already with KDE4 and is still in progress, then please apologize the mistake and feel free to reopen it.
Christian, I think there may be some confusion here. My understanding is that openSUSE 11.1's KDE4 (and SLE11's) currently ships with the knetworkmanager from KDE3, i.e. the NetworkManager-kde rpm which is documented here: http://en.opensuse.org/Projects/KNetworkManager I was told that this is because the KDE4 NetworkManager applet (i.e. the NetworkManager-kde4 rpm) is still under development and not at all ready for general usage: http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3873 Therefore this bug is about the current ability to connect to networks in KDE4 in both 11.1 and SLED11, which seems to me to be pretty serious (it forced me to switch to GNOME, at least :-/ ) If my understanding is incorrect, I would be very grateful if you could point me at the documentation which explains it. Thanks!
You are right - the truth is that we don't have resources to maintain both the KDE 3 and KDE 4 clients. I've been working on the new NetworkManager-kde4 for 11.2 which also works in 11.1 when using the KDE:KDE4:Factory:Desktop OBS repository. Could you test this version? The problem should be fixed there.
Then I don't understand how anyone is using wireless via KDE NetworkManager on 11.1 or SLED11. Shouldn't this be at least critical, if not a blocker? Or does it magically work for everyone else? I'm sorry to say I switched from KDE to GNOME because I encountered too many issues with basic functionality like this and do not have enough time to help debug them all. I am sure it will work fine in the new version, so if you are short on resources, perhaps you should simply resolve this as WONTFIX.
Since there aren't a lot of duplicate bug reports on this, I assume it's isolated to you, or people have developed some workaround like restarting knetworkmanager to get the latest scan results, or run nm-applet. Either desktop's client works fine under a 'foreign' desktop - indeed, fedora has been shipping nm-applet as the NetworkManager client for KDE spins. We even have users telling other users not to bother testing the KDE 4 version because the 3 version is superior! - http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse/2009-09/msg00499.html . With this situation and because 11.2 will be out in a couple of months I am choosing to assume that, except for you, 11.1 is 'good enough'. I am dealing with our lack of resources to deal with this in-house by writing a maintainable KDE 4 version and building an upstream team to look after it, but this is necessarily for the KDE 4 version. I'm sorry that you jumped ship entirely, but would like it if you can give NetworkManager-kde4 a test to see if there is still some hardware/kernel/NetworkManager/client combination that I should worry about.
Very odd - like I said in comment #10 it's not just me, but maybe you're right that it's still some odd corner case. I'll try to find some time to test the new kde4 version when I upgrade to 11.2 but can't promise anything. Thanks for the update!
I finally installed 11.2 and tried NetworkManager-kde4 - it has some rather horrific other problems relating to kwalletmanager, but not this one! (Yet again the equivalent behaviour worked first time with the GNOME NM applet, but that's a story for another bug...) So I think you should resolve this one as WONTFIX. Thanks for your help.
Ok thanks. The excessive walletry is known and will be fixed.