Bug 195463

Summary:	knetworkmanager cannot find any networks in KDE 3.5.10 on Debian Lenny x86_64
Product:	[Unmaintained] knetworkmanager	Reporter:	Philip Ashmore <contact>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Will Stephenson <wstephenson>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	normal
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	unspecified
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Philip Ashmore 2009-06-06 15:14:20 UTC

Version:           0.2.2 (using 3.5.10, Debian Package 4:3.5.10.dfsg.1-0lenny1 (lenny/sid))
Compiler:          Target: x86_64-linux-gnu
OS:                Linux (x86_64) release 2.6.26-2-amd64

This happens every time I reinstall Debian!
Somehow tweaking the settings in /etc/network/interfaces usually gets it unstuck, but not today.
By "tweaking" I mean surfing the web trying different approaches until knetworkmanager takes the hint - usually it takes a couple of reboots / loading or unloading of modules, etc.
 
I use module assistant to build the madwifi kernel modules, downloaded via a wired network.
iwlist ath0 scanning displays the wireless networks correctly.

What's even more twisted, when connected to the wired network knetworkmanager displays the wired network image in the tray, but left-clicking on it (with the mouse) shows the connection status dialog with "no active device".
Right-clicking on the applet -> "Options" -> "Disable Wireless" is enabled but non-functional.
Right-clicking on the applet -> "Options" -> "Switch to Offline mode" is enabled but non-functional.

No wireless networks are displayed by the applet.

I tried running knetworkmanager from konsole, but I get

Error requesting name, org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.AccessDenied: Connection ":1.17" is not allowed to own the service "org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerInfo" due to security policies in the configuration file

Comment 1 Philip Ashmore 2009-06-07 12:02:11 UTC

I fixed it.
Maybe this should go into some kind of GNU/Linux troubleshooter!

The problem solution needs some background:
I keep my development files in a separate partition so I can backup and restore it with different distributions. Because of this I set my regular user id to 500, the default for a Fedora install but not Debian where it's 1000.

When installing Debian I create a temporary user "x" (with id 1000) so I can log in and then create my regular user "y" (with id 500).

By default new users get their own group with the same name.

The problem was that I didn't add user "y" to the same system groups as user "x"!
These groups are dialout,cdrom,floppy,audio,video,plugdev,netdev,powerdev.
This can be repaired with
    # usermod -G $(groups x | sed -e 's|x ||g' -e 's| |,|g') -a y
to add user "y" to the groups x belongs to, but not group "x".

Too bad the error messages were so cryptic.

Comment 2 Philip Ashmore 2009-06-07 12:08:43 UTC

By the way I reported this to Debian

network-manager-kde: knetworkmanager cannot find any networks in KDE 3.5.10 on Debian Lenny amd-64
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=532116

with the above solution

Comment 3 Will Stephenson 2010-01-05 16:58:52 UTC

The error message is more verbose (and in the GUI) now.