Network profiles completely broken

[Psychotron]

Binary package hint: knetworkconf

Installed Kubuntu Edgy Eft today and while it's generally pretty great, I'm a bit disappointed that Network Profiles are still (I reported it for Breezy at that time) basically unusable :( That's how it appears to me, at least. It's something essential for laptop users.

Well, the main problem is, that it is already completely unclear how that profile stuff is generally supposed to work. E.g. what do those buttons, like Load..., Save... or Create, actually do or what they refer to? For instance, Load seems to bring the settings of the profile instantly into effect, not just when pressing Apply/Ok. And at the same time it seems to save something to somewhere. This is irritating. Or Save, I understand as: save current settings into selected profile, but nothing seems to happen. Or Create new, does it create an empty profile or one containing the current settings?? So this needs some love, conceptually.

Some more specific problems:
- the content of all profiles is the same (at least that's what the tooltips show)
- once saved (no idea how and when that actually happend, see above), settings for default gateway or DNS aren't saved later on. They are simply ignored.
- when changing settings of a device, like the IP of eth0, the change _instantly_ appears in _all_ profiles (again, this is what the tooltip shows)
- is there any sence in showing both, IP and device for the default gateway? What if they differ??
- at some point changing to admin mode fails. I just get a dialog with: "Conversation with su failed"
- I can delete profiles as normal user, but they are back when you launch the settings dialog again. (so apparently you can't, the UI should reflect that)

Greets Michael

[Jools Wills (jools)]

I am running feisty and network profiles do indeed seem broken.

Configure eth0 interface to 192.168.1.10
Create a new profile "test". Click apply.
KNetwork conf then saves the current ip config to Test? (It's unclear - save selected doesnt seem to do anything?)

Create another profile "Test2" and change ip for eth0 to 192.168.1.20
Save save selected (nothing seems to happen) and apply.
you get a message saving profile.
Hover over both network profiles to see that they have both now got the ip address 192.168.1.20!

Network profiles do not seem to work. If I am going about it the wrong way then the bug is still valid as it is completely unintuitive.

[amisis (e-giampieri)]

same problem as Jools smyth...i wasted a lot of time after it...

the network set my ip to some unknown number.
I changed it, press apply, it say that it worked but in the fact doesn't change the config (checked with ifconfig).
After that i quit the config, and it asked me to confirm a change in the form i never made...i say yes and it revert the ip to the first strange adress.

Lately i edit the ip and then exit directely, then choose yes at the exit form.
it take the right adress and worked, but it's a bit frustrating to try to figure out why...

[s0undt3ch (ufs)]

I also notice the problem, also running feisty.

Is this gonna get resolved, since it already comes from breezy?!

[Roderick Drew (r-c-drew)]

There seems to be a workaround which I stumbled upon somewhere herein. One can enter DNS name-servers by adding the following line to /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf:

prepend domain-name-servers 192.168.60.1, 172.16.254.2;

(The name-servers above are obviously examples)

Those name servers will always be placed first in /etc/resolve.conf

It has worked for me so far with no apparent ill side-effects.

[Jens Bremmekamp (nem75)]

I confirm this bug for Feisty.

Why exactly is the importance undecided? This is extremely annoying for anyone who wants to use Kubuntu on a shared work/home notebook. If the OS is to gain importance not only on private desktops the importance of this bug shouldn't be too hard to decide on...

[Dax Solomon Umaming (knightlust)]

Issue confirmed in Feisty, changed Importance to Low.

[alrac (carla)]

Same bug in Gutsy- you can save all kinds of profiles, but none of them actually save any settings.

[Guillermo Belli (glock24)]

The bug is still present in Hardy! It is very annoying.

[Guillermo Belli (glock24)]

Well, KDE 3.5.x is not available in Kubuntu anymore since 8.10, so I don't this will ever get fixed.

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

Since knetworkconf is totally busted in KDE4 and seemingly unmaintained upstream, we are removing knetworkconf from distribution.