wicd alternatives? non-GNOME, config file and curses mgmt OK

[jeffk]

Are there any recommendations for a minimalist wired and wireless connection manager that does what wicd does, but written in C? I would be completely content without a GUI, driven by config files and a curses SSID browser would be nice.

I am a long-time user and fan of wicd, I like it much better than the versions of GNOME network manager available at the time. It does exactly what I want it to do, but when wicd is down, you can find yourself SOL.

Today I was affected by the recent wicd problem with python 2.7, which seems to be fixed per bug 333001.

I was obliged to downgrade to python-2.6, which required a long 84-package rebuild, before I got online and saw the fixed bug. It underscores the point, I couldn't seem to get back online even with a wired connection without wicd. I think there is some trick to doing so, but I didn't have that note available on my hard drive.

In any case, I've been thinking about trying alternatives for some time. wicd is usually high up on my htop list, and the fragility from all the necessary moving parts is sometimes a real problem. I run the awesome window manager, and am trying to run without GNOME on my system (still have gnome-lite at present), although many GUI apps remain.

Again, all due respect to wicd, I like it a lot, but something smaller, faster and with fewer dependencies would be nice to try out and/or have around when wicd breaks.

Thanks,
Jeff[/url]

[depontius]

Up until recently, I always made do with configuration, scripting, wpa_supplicant, and the occasional root window. Recently I was given a new machine at work with GNOME, and I've been using NetworkManager on it, and shimmed some of my old scripting stuff into it.

I'm not quite sure what kind of machine you have and what kind of connections you're trying to manage. For my desktop or server machines, I just use stock configuration capabilities. For my laptop I've used stock configuration plus netplug/ifplugd plus my own scripting. When wireless I've generally opened a root shell, started the wireless interface manually, then run wpa_gui (There is also "wpa_cli".) to see scan results if I'm not on one of my normal networks.
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.sigs waste space and bandwidth

[jeffk]

Thanks for the tip, I was unaware of wpa_cli. It says 'Could not connect to wpa_supplicant - re-trying', but that is probably because wicd is using it already.

I am using a Lenovo Thinkpad T61p laptop with ~amd64, Intel 4965 wireless, always on home wireless WPA2, so auto-reconnect is needed, use a CLI ssid browser when traveling. Auto-detect when wired connection available is nice.

Thanks.

[depontius]

I've never actually used wpa_cli, myself. My gentoo config files are such that net.wlan0 will start wpa_supplicant automagically, and its config file is such that if I'm in one of my "normal" locations it will just auto-connect. But if I'm somewhere else, I start wpa_gui, run its scanner, and tell it who/how I want to connect.
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.sigs waste space and bandwidth

[Fitzcarraldo]

jeffk, give ConnMan a try. I'm using it under E17 on another machine (an old laptop without much power), and it works a treat. I could not get Wicd to work with my wireless network using WPA encryption, but ConnMan works fine with WPA and also with a wired connection (as did NetworkManager and nm-applet, before I replaced them with ConnMan to try it out).

[norg]

ConnMan looks nice never heard of it.
Another alternative is the networkmanager, it's avaiable with cli:

net-misc/cnetworkmanager