"network settings" doesn't support ad-hoc wireless networks

[Adam Lydick]

My home network uses ad-hoc 802.11b (with DHCP and a NAT to the internet). The
only supported option in the network configurator is an implicit "wireless_mode
managed". Manually adding "wireless_mode ad-hoc" to /etc/network/interfaces will
certainly work around the problem, but it would be nice to configure it via
gnome-system-tools.

[Vincent Untz (vuntz)]

The hard part here is how to do this UI-wise: most people will want managed or
ad-hoc, so a checkbutton would seem like a good solution. But there are other
modes (Master, Repeater, Secondary, Monitor, Auto). So a combo box would be more
complete, but the user might not understand all the options...

[Adam Lydick (lydickaw)]

(In reply to comment #1)
> The hard part here is how to do this UI-wise: most people will want managed or
> ad-hoc, so a checkbutton would seem like a good solution. But there are other
> modes (Master, Repeater, Secondary, Monitor, Auto). So a combo box would be more
> complete, but the user might not understand all the options...

I think that most people would need either ad-hoc or managed. The fancy options
usually involve lots of other manual hacking anyway (installing kismet or
hostapd + radius) and would be nearly impossible to fit into a UI that appears
sane to everyone.

I suggest adding a combobox under "essid" that offers managed/ad-hoc and defaults
to managed. Default to managed.

Additional (related) suggestions:

* An even better solution would be to display a history of seen networks for the
user to choose from.
* I didn't see any place to configure 802.1x / WPA / WPA2 / WEP + preshared key,
this would be a good thing.

[Vincent Untz (vuntz)]

(In reply to comment #2)
> I suggest adding a combobox under "essid" that offers managed/ad-hoc and defaults
> to managed. Default to managed.

If we have a combo box, then we can show all the modes.
The problem if we don't show all the modes is this one: if a poweruser who chose
another mode modifies his config with g-s-t, g-s-t won't be able to keep the old
mode. And it will break the poweruser's config.

> Additional (related) suggestions:
>
> * An even better solution would be to display a history of seen networks for the
> user to choose from.

Totally, agree. Hoary Hedgehog will maybe feature NetworkManager, so all this
will change, anyway...

> * I didn't see any place to configure 802.1x / WPA / WPA2 / WEP + preshared key,
> this would be a good thing.

Patch in bug #8588.

[Carlos Garnacho (carlosg)]

Since the most used options seem to be managed and ad-hoc, I'll try to add at
least ad-hoc for GST 1.2, as I'm now heavily modifying the network-tool

BTW, essid detections already works in the CVS branch with the new network tool

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

is that still an issue?

[Adam Lydick (lydickaw)]

(In reply to comment #5)
> is that still an issue?

Should I verify this in Breezy, I assume? I didn't see it on my hoary laptop.
I'll upgrade to my breezy laptop to GST and see what things look like.

My $0.02 on this topic, now that I've slept on it for a few months:

For the common case, ad-hoc probably needs to be very dynamic (eg: I'm in a
meeting and want to share some files with some folks, but there isn't an
infrastructure wifi network available). I'm not sure that GST is the right place
for this. OSX gets this right. Novell's network conf applet looked pretty
promising as well (and quite similar).

I'll reply back with further comments after I have a look at the latest bits
from Carlos.

Thanks for looking into this :)

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Yes, it's still a issue with breezy. We don't have network-manager in main and
network-admin does not support ad-hoc connection s (at least I didn't find
something in the GUI).

[Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount)]

Is this issue solved with Networ-manager now part of main in Dapper ?

[Adam Lydick (lydickaw)]

Yes, that fixes this bug. Thanks!

[Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount)]

fixed, according to the reporter. G-S-T doesn't support wpa but N-M does.

Feel free to reopen it if it's G-S-T specific.