Unreliable Wicd

pootler · 2021-01-18 12:48:48

HI,

So.. I was having various problems with my Devuan install, and in the end, yesterday decided to do a clean install using the desktop iso.

I have a broadcom b4322, so I needed to install b43 fwcutter and b43 firmware installer.

Ok - did that.

Opened WIcd, added wlan0 as the wifi interface

Sat patiently, and then ssid's appeared. - yay!!

Problem is the whole thing is so flakey?

I can be connected to wifi, but when I open the manager it says ''no networks found''

If I refresh, sometimes things appears, sometimes nothing.

Then sometimes later on,I will open the manager and it will show the ssid's?

This can be a pain if I need to change to a different wifi at home, because - even though I am connected to a network, the manager says no networks found, and I cannot switch.

Could I remove wicd ( using Synaptic), and then install network manager instead and try that, or does wicd always have to be installed?

Can someone enlighten me? - or maybe share their ''reliable methods''

Many Thanks

pootler

Last edited by pootler (2021-01-18 12:50:26)

dice · 2021-01-18 13:07:05

I dont use wifi managers like wicd or network manager so I will share my reliable method. Its all done from the terminal, this has no bells and whistles, icons etc, its all backend work. I keep an eye on my connection through a basic shell script through a status panel.

basic wifi wpa_supplicant setup.

as root user do the following.

wpa_passphrase ESSID PASSPHRASE > /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

edit /etc/network/interfaces to look something like below.

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
        wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

allow-hotplug usb0
iface usb0 inet dhcp

you can control wifi by using sudo ifup wlan0 to bring wifi up and sudo ifdown wlan0 to bring it down.

In any case having auto wlan0 in /etc/network/interfaces will connect automatically on boot if you are using devuan beowulf.

You can have multiple wifi wpa_supplicant networks as well and connect to them manually with a bit of editing.

Last edited by dice (2021-01-18 13:24:37)

pootler · 2021-01-18 14:46:15

HI Dice

Nice to talk to you again :-)

Thanks for the info - will try your method , but unfortunately I am not the only one using the laptop, so it needs to be ''uber friendly''.

Cheers

pootler

dice · 2021-01-18 15:03:32

In that case getting Network Manager working is probably a better idea, its usually just click and connect, disconnect.

If you have the file /etc/network/interfaces make sure to comment out any networks in relation to your wifi or ethernet as i believe Network Manager handles this in its own way.

Ive used NetworkManager in the past and it does the job.

Try installing it like this.

sudo apt install network-manager network-manager-gnome

reboot

bgstack15 · 2021-01-18 15:03:34

If you think wicd itself is the cause of the problem, perhaps you could try another lightweight network manager (not to be confused with Network Manager). When Devuan Ceres dropped wicd because it is written in python2, I switched to connman. It has been about as good as wicd.

I had a flaky wireless network card that thankfully also got added to mainline kernel tree around the time I had to drop wicd, so I was never sure if it was the flaky driver or wicd.

dice · 2021-01-18 15:17:43

until wicd is inserted into testing which it wont this release cycle i would be more inclined to use either network manager or connman for ease of use for newbies. Network Manager maybe bloat but it works.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2021-01-18 18:12:18

dice wrote:

as root user do the following.

wpa_passphrase ESSID PASSPHRASE > /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

It is possible to use ifupdown without creating a wpa_supplicant configuration file.

Just define the SSID and password directly in /etc/network/interfaces, like this:

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
   wpa-ssid $ssid
   wpa-psk $password

Replace $ssid with the name of the access point and replace $password with the password (or use the obfuscated psk line from the wpa_passphrase output but note that the hashing is performed unsalted so it should not be considered secure).

See also https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi/HowToUse#W … d_WPA2-PSK

But having said that a wpa_supplicant configuration file would allow for the use of wpagui, which needs these lines added to the top of the configuration file:

ctrl_interface=/run/wpa_supplicant
update_config=1

The GUI is fairly "friendly" and may be suitable for the OP's needs.

I prefer iwd over wpa_supplicant because it is lighter, more secure, has fewer dependencies and it can be used as a complete wireless networking solution by itself (it has built-in dhcp functionality). The only drawbacks are that the Devuan package lacks a sysvinit script and the version in beowulf is pre-release.

pootler · 2021-01-19 02:39:21

dice wrote:

In that case getting Network Manager working is probably a better idea, its usually just click and connect, disconnect.
If you have the file /etc/network/interfaces make sure to comment out any networks in relation to your wifi or ethernet as i believe Network Manager handles this in its own way.
Ive used NetworkManager in the past and it does the job.
Try installing it like this.
sudo apt install network-manager network-manager-gnome
reboot

get this from terminal:

Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
network-manager : Depends: libpolkit-agent-1-0 (>= 0.99) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libpolkit-gobject-1-0 (>= 0.104)
Depends: libpam-systemd
Depends: policykit-1 but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: modemmanager but it is not going to be installed
network-manager-gnome : Depends: policykit-1-gnome but it is not going to be installed or
polkit-1-auth-agent
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

This is a fresh install and has been updated and upgraded?

dice · 2021-01-19 02:46:19

Hi pootler what did you install desktop wise, xfce4?

This issue possibly because you dont have libelogind0 installed?

do

sudo apt install libelogind0

and then yes to remove libsystemd0

then try to install network manager again.

I believe this is the issue, i could be wrong...

edit: I was successfully able to install network manager on devuan beowulf just now.

Last edited by dice (2021-01-19 02:50:20)

dice · 2021-01-19 07:02:09

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

I prefer iwd over wpa_supplicant because it is lighter, more secure, has fewer dependencies and it can be used as a complete wireless networking solution by itself (it has built-in dhcp functionality). The only drawbacks are that the Devuan package lacks a sysvinit script and the version in beowulf is pre-release.

Ill probably switch to iwd when/if it is ready for devuan. Ive used it in bleeding edge arch and it works quite well, easy to configure using iwctl.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2021-01-19 16:37:44

dice wrote:

Ill probably switch to iwd when/if it is ready for devuan

The iwd maintainer wouldn't add the init scripts to the package without a proper diff but they did modify it so that non-systemd dbus activation should work. This means that the version in testing/unstable should work as a backend for NetworkManager or connman but an init script would still have to be added for standalone usage.

See https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … bug=966518 for the details.

dice · 2021-01-20 03:02:50

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

dice wrote:
Ill probably switch to iwd when/if it is ready for devuan
The iwd maintainer wouldn't add the init scripts to the package without a proper diff but they did modify it so that non-systemd dbus activation should work. This means that the version in testing/unstable should work as a backend for NetworkManager or connman but an init script would still have to be added for standalone usage.
See https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … bug=966518 for the details.

I wonder if this eiwd is worth looking into for a no dbus dependancy, still would need an init script created for it though. Might give it a try myself. Although it looks like dylanaraps has left this project to gather some dust for one reason or another.

https://github.com/dylanaraps/eiwd/releases

Head_on_a_Stick · 2021-01-20 16:05:35

iwd doesn't have a dbus dependency and works just fine without it, dbus activation is only needed if iwd is being used as a backend for NetworkManager or connman.

@OP: sorry for the diversion, I'll stop now.

dice · 2021-01-20 16:31:17

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

iwd doesn't have a dbus dependency and works just fine without it, dbus activation is only needed if iwd is being used as a backend for NetworkManager or connman.
@OP: sorry for the diversion, I'll stop now.

so why would dylanaraps go to all the trouble of building iwd without dbus?

iwd without dbus
----------------
This is a complete rewrite of the original eiwd with
the new focus being to modify as little as possible
from upstream.
All that has changed in the iwd code is the insertion
of ifdefs to block away dbus code when desired.

https://github.com/dylanaraps/eiwd

Why are you sorry, the OP has probably gone back to windows or ubuntu, mint.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2021-01-20 16:35:42

dice wrote:

so why would dylanaraps go to all the trouble of building iwd without dbus?

Dylan is utterly fanatical about minimalism and will go to almost any lengths to reduce the code base.

EDIT: I removed all of the xinerama ifdefs from my custom dwm packages for Alpine, Debian & OpenBSD for a similar reason. It saved a few hundred SLOC IIRC.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2021-01-20 16:38:15)

pootler · 2021-01-22 22:49:46

Since I started the thread, time to stop it:-)
I had lots of small problems, so went ahead and did another clean install.
Not sure - will have to see what happens for a week or so
I ''may'' have found an answer to my unreliable wicd.
Turns out my network card is rtl 1868. I needed to install a relevant. dkms, to prevent devuan defaulting to RTL 1869, if connection dropped or changed

Cheers

Keep safe everyone.

Pootler

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#1 2021-01-18 12:48:48

Unreliable Wicd

#2 2021-01-18 13:07:05

Re: Unreliable Wicd

#3 2021-01-18 14:46:15

Re: Unreliable Wicd

#4 2021-01-18 15:03:32

Re: Unreliable Wicd

#5 2021-01-18 15:03:34

Re: Unreliable Wicd

#6 2021-01-18 15:17:43

Re: Unreliable Wicd

#7 2021-01-18 18:12:18

Re: Unreliable Wicd

#8 2021-01-19 02:39:21

Re: Unreliable Wicd

#9 2021-01-19 02:46:19

Re: Unreliable Wicd

#10 2021-01-19 07:02:09

Re: Unreliable Wicd

#11 2021-01-19 16:37:44

Re: Unreliable Wicd

#12 2021-01-20 03:02:50

Re: Unreliable Wicd

#13 2021-01-20 16:05:35

Re: Unreliable Wicd

#14 2021-01-20 16:31:17

Re: Unreliable Wicd

#15 2021-01-20 16:35:42

Re: Unreliable Wicd

#16 2021-01-22 22:49:46

Re: Unreliable Wicd

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