Wireless network (extremely) lazy startup

[a_flj_]

Hi.

A little over a month ago I got a new PC (AMD Phenom X6/3.2 GHz, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB SATA drive and an ASUS crosshair formula IV MB) with no built-in wireless network adapter.

No problem, my previous desktop also had none, so I just reused the old one. It's an adapter which uses a realtek chipset:

flj@desktop:~$ lsusb | grep ra
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 13b1:0020 Linksys WUSB54GC 802.11g Adapter [ralink rt73]

The kubuntu 10.04 installer had no problem detecting it, and installing drivers for it, I had configured wireless on my laptop before, so everything went smooth and I started to happily use my new desktop.

However, there's a tiny problem, which gets more annoying as time passes: the wireless network is always very late to start. There are several other apps that start up automatically, which require a network (the plasma weather applet, for one), which start well ahead of the wireless network connection being established. It may sometimes take more than a minute until the network manager remembers to ask for the password for the wallet, in order to retrieve the wireless network settings, and then actually establish the connection.

Now, my supposition is that there are some missing dependencies in kubuntu's upstart files, but I have no knowledge with upstart, and too little knowledge of kubuntu's network scripts to investigate this properly.

So here are my two questions:
- am I right in my assumption that using upstart's scripts I could get the wireless network connection being established earlier?
- if so how? if not, is there another way?

br,

flj

[oshunluvr]

Re: Wireless network (extremely) lazy startup

Usually this can be solved by removing all network manager software and editing your
/etc/network/interfaces file manually.

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid MYSSID
wireless-key 12345678912345678912345678

The downside to this is your wep key is in plain text. I think if you use WICD (you must remove knetworkmanager completely) you can select "Available to all Users" and "Connect Automatically" and that might work as well.

[a_flj_]

Re: Wireless network (extremely) lazy startup

Hi.

Usually this can be solved by removing all network manager software and editing your
/etc/network/interfaces file manually.

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid MYSSID
wireless-key 12345678912345678912345678

The downside to this is your wep key is in plain text. I think if you use WICD (you must remove knetworkmanager completely) you can select "Available to all Users" and "Connect Automatically" and that might work as well.

Idunno ... I don't use WEP but WPA, and network manager seems to keep the secret in my wallet. And I like the easiness of using KNetworkManager. I also want to have the possibility to switch networks and to easily manage network connections provided by KNetworkManager - I need this.

My question was about something else, however. How do I get some stuff managed by upstart to require KNetworkManager to start and connect early?

br,

flj

[The Liquidator]

Re: Wireless network (extremely) lazy startup

This is interesting, because I gave up on Wicd and reverted to network manager ("nm") precisely because of the issue described by the OP- stuff like the weather plasmoid timed out before the wireless came up.

I note that you have the system always ask kwallet and I wonder whether that's the issue - nm is waiting for a reaction from kwallet, rather than nm being slow to respond.

I assume you have set up nm to connect automatically from within the connection settings? On next connection try "always allow" when you see the kwallet dialog. If that doesn't work, you could always take a look at this

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3109644.0

[a_flj_]

Re: Wireless network (extremely) lazy startup

I don't mind entering the password to the wallet every time I log on, and I don't want to store passwords in unencrypted storage, so I'm OK with the wallet.

Things happen like this: I get a prompt for my password for kvpnc to start up, since it's doing some sudoing, then I get another password prompt from kvpnc since it wants to use root's wallet instead of my wallet to extract the VPN info, then I have t wait a while. All this time the weather plasmoid tries to download fresh weather information. Sometimes nothing happens for a long enough time for the weather plasmoid's request to time out. Then, out of the blue (well, black on my desktop) knetworkmanager remembers it has to connect to the (hidden) wireless network which is configured as default network.

What I would like is to connect knetworkmanager to some upstart script, so it's pushed to start building up the connection early on, if at all possible. I haven't looked into knetworkmanager having a CLI or not, whether there's some script or the like that knetworkmanager calls or the like. I was hoping somebody with extensive knowledge about Ubuntu/Kubuntu here on the lists might give me a useful hint. I'm pretty much time-constrained right now, so I won't be able to look at this for a while.