Re: A few newbie questions about networking (wired and wireless)

[Chavdar Ivanov <ci4ic4%gmail.com@localhost>]

On 10 November 2013 20:32, Ottavio Caruso
<ottavio2006-usenet2012%yahoo.com@localhost> wrote:
> I've finally managed to install the amd64 port onto a usb disk to use
> with a Thinkpad X61.

OK,

>
> When running the post-installation utility from the installer, I was
> given the option to configure the network. The interfaces available
> were wm0, iwn0 and fpiw0. So I selected the iwn0 (wireless) but the
> installer complained that it couldn't find a carrier (odd, because the
> router is a couple of metres away) and it timed out.

AFAIK the installer doesn't have easy wpa_supplicant configuration
(assuming you use WPA-PSK on the router).

> So I selected wm0 and it correctly found the network and was able to
> install pkgin.
>
> However now every time I boot the system it hangs a couple of minutes
> trying to configure wm0 even when no cable is plugged in.

I don't recall exactly this; it could delay trying to reach a DNS server.

>
> 1) Is the above mentioned intended behaviour?
>
> 2) How can I tell the system not to spend time configuring the card if
> no cable is plugged in, without blacklisting the card in rc.conf?

I'd suggest use dhcpcd.

>
> 3) Is it theoretically possible to configure a wireless network using
> wpa from the installer.

Not sure, never tried to configure networking during installation - I
always leave that after the reboot into the new system.

>
> And the most urgent one:
> 4) I swap between home (wpa) and public library (open network)
> wireless. Is there any kind of user friendly gui-based applet that can
> help me switch between these networks?

Well, there is GUI in pkgsrc (see net/dhcpcd-gtk), I've tried it, but
I usually preconfigure my wireless networks in wpa_supplicant.conf -
you can have as many networks defined there as you like, it will pick
up the one which is available and associate with it; from then on
dhcpcd will get you an address from the DHCP server on the network (in
the trivial case the wireless router).

>
> On Linux I was using network manager and nm-applet. I understand they
> are not available either as a binary package or in the ports. I
> believe PC-BSD has a similar applet. Is it possible to install it on
> Netbsd and if so, how?


>
> Thanks
>
> --
> Ottavio

Cheers,

Chavdar


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