On Sun, Sep 13, 2015 at 02:35:43PM +0200, Edward Bartolo wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> As I am approaching the final stages of Pre-Alpha development, I would
> like to ask how netman should behave when 'automatic connections' are
> enabled.

> Needless to state the obvious, here, we are not doing Microsoft, but
> rather, we want to keep netman as simple as it can be. Yes, there are
> opinions contrary to what I am doing, but the world is such, that we
> cannot please everyone.
>
> At the moment, I am thinking about how netman should behave when
> automatic searching and connecting to wifi hotspots is enabled. I
> already have an idea how this can be achieved, but I want to use the
> least of processing time possible, knowing from experience how network
> managers that think for themselves can be made to almost clog the
> system.

May I suggest that you step back and take a look at the big picture?

As I see it, the big picture is more-or-less this:

-netman is a gui to configure and manage ifup, which uses wpa_supplicant
plugins to connect to specific pre-configured wireless interfaces.

-ifup is a one-shot tool to configure network interfaces, featuring
a great capacity for plugins. It cannot handle wireless itself,
but there is a wpa_supplicant plugin.

-wpa_supplicant is a daemon designed to autoconnect to wireless
networks, supporting roaming and just about every type of wireless
network.

-the wpa_supplicant plugins are scripts that allow "ifup wlan0"
to configure wlan0 in EITHER of two ways:
 (a) start wpa_supplicant with no config and add a single network:
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
    wpa-ssid "foo"
    wpa-psk "topsecretpassword"
 (b) start wpa_supplicant with a pre-defined config containing all
 the networks, and configure the interface on connection:
iface wlan0 inet manual
    wpa-roam "/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf"

iface default inet dhcp


It's seemed rather odd to me that netman ignores wpa-roam.

HTH,
Isaac Dunham