Wifi keys cannot be removed manually

[Pat McGowan]

The normal sequence is that the connection fails and the user is then reprompted.
Or the user can find and remove the key in the keyring.
An interface needs to be added to allow the key to be changed. This is planned as part of Connection Manager work.

[Pat McGowan (pat-mcgowan)]

Target beta 2

[ToddBrandt (todd-e-brandt)]

The gnome-keyring application currently doesn't save any keys at all, that's a prerequisite to this bug being fixed. After that we can add another entry to the nm-applet's menu pulldown which can popup a keyring editor. The GUI code can be embedded in the network-manager-applet package and the configuration of the keys handled via a more advanced DBUS API from the gnome-keyring daemon.

[Tony Espy (awe)]

The keyring daemon will save keys if the default.keyring exists. We currently install a non-password protected default.keyring in the images we give to Compal and everything works just fine.

Loic is here in Lexington this week and said that he would help me debug the keyring-ask crash ( the reason keys / passphrases can't be saved if no default.keyring exists ).

The long-term strategy was to use ConnMan's replacement for the gnome-system-tool's network-admin application. This new application hopefully would allow a user to edit / create / delete the Wi-Fi networks. I created a blueprint for improving the networking stack that I had hoped was going to be discussed at the last Mobile Sprint, but it was side-lined due to the impending release of ConnMan. This blueprint discusses something called a "Connection Manager" which describes my vision of this new network-admin replacement.

See: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MobileAndEmbedded/Networking

I really don't think a keyring editor is the right way to go. Keys are currently stored in keyrings as hex strings ( even if entered as passphrases ), and also keyring editors don't know anything about Wi-Fi, so you could go to the keyring editor, change a key, and click a "re-connect" button. You'd have to change the key in the keyring editor, go back to the nm-applet, select the AP again and hope that the nm-applet code doesn't cache keys...

FYI, I am currently working on some of the changes documented in my blueprint ( Radio On/Off support via nm-applet, and dynamic power-save while un-associated ) independently ( using NM ) as Compal expects some of the changes to be inn the product.

[Mauri Whalen (mauri-whalen)]

These changes need to be managed locally in the ppa.
We need to use the patch mechanism.
We are going to create an Ubuntu mobile PPA branch of the network manager code.
Label - Ubuntu mobile network manager branch, new fixes go to that tree.

[Mauri Whalen (mauri-whalen)]

For now, we have a sufficient solution. The future direction should be around connman.

[Tony Espy (awe)]

The sufficient solution that Mauri alluded to in the previous comment is the new "Edit Wireless" menu item that appeared in the latest version of network-manager-gnome 0.66.

This menu item launches a new application which allows the user to edit the saved networks and is also integrated with gnome-keyring.

The interface is a bit too "techie" for an average user, but it allows the user to remove a previously saved network, which in turn will cause NetworkManager to re-prompt for a new key.

It's also possible to edit the saved key, although see my previous note about keys being saved in hex ( blech ), which makes changing keys kinda dicey.

[Tony Espy (awe)]

Changed status based on yesterday's triage meeting. This bug will remain open as a placeholder, but there is not active work being done on it.

[Tony Espy (awe)]

No active work is being done for this bug as "Edit Wireless" allows this to be done.