"Connect" in Ubuntu One does not work with "disconnected" networks

[Sergey Fukanchik]

I have network connection over experimental wimax driver. When it connects to the internet It somehow doesn't update networking status to the OS and applications still believe there is no network connectivity. For instance in Firefox there is menu item File->Work Offline. It stays in offline mode even after the actual network connectivity is there. If i turn this item off then firefox continues to work perfectly. The same applies to Pidgin. It doesn't go online at start, but if i reenable accounts it connects.

In Ubuntu One there is also "Connect" menu item. But it does nothing for me. Probably in opposite to FF and Pidgin it checks connectivity before connecting see that no active connection reported and does nothing.

ProblemType: Bug
.home.fuxx..cache.ubuntuone.log.syncdaemon.exceptions.log:

.home.fuxx..config.ubuntuone.syncdaemon.conf:
 [bandwidth_throttling]
 read_limit = 0
 write_limit = 0
 on = False
.home.fuxx..config.ubuntuone.ubuntuone.client.conf:
 [ubuntuone]
 bookmarked = True
 connected = True
 connect = 0
 show_applet = 1
Architecture: amd64
CrashDB: ubuntuone
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
NonfreeKernelModules: wl nvidia
Package: ubuntuone-client 1.1.0+r306-0ubuntu1~ppa1~jaunty
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=ru_RU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ubuntuone-client
ThirdParty: True
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-17-generic x86_64
UnreportableReason: Это не оригинальный пакет Ubuntu

[Roman Yepishev (rye)]

Hi Sergey,

UbuntuOne uses NetworkManager to query for network status. In case it is installed and running then UbuntuOne checks for connection state. In case NetworkManager uninstalled or otherwise not running then UbuntuOne software does not check the state and tries to connect anyway.

The best way to make this work is to get NetworkManager to support your WiMax driver, I advice you to open a separate bug report (since I could not find one and I don't have the hardware to test this) for NetworkManager providing the info on how the NM should handle WiMax connections.

Since all applications believe that there is no connectivity when NetworkManager says so, then it is possible to avoid such problem by stopping Network Manager:
#jaunty:
$ sudo /etc/init.d/NetworkManager stop
#karmic:
$ sudo stop network-manager
. In this case UbuntuOne client will not be able to query connection state and will try to connect to the server. If this works you might want to disable NetworkManager startup.

[Roman Yepishev (rye)]

 NetworkManager is not always able to control the network. I.e. if the network is started behind its back (simply because NM can not create it, as with this wimax driver), Network manager appears to be running but it does not detect any network.

When ubuntuone queries NM "Are we connected?". NM says "Nope". And UbuntuOne sits waiting for network connection.

What may be needed, indeed, is to control whether u1 should listen to NM or not. I.e. [ ] Work offline in firefox (you can force it to be online) or gconf key in Empathy that controls whether connection managers should be queried.

Currently if no NM is running then U1 connects anyway; But if it IS running then things get more complicated for networks that were brought not via Network Manager.