[kde-networkmanager] knetworkmanager and vpn plugins

[Timo Hoenig]

Hi,

On Wed, 2006-06-14 at 15:03 +0200, Michael Biebl wrote:

> one area where knetworkmanager is currently lacking in comparison with
> nm-applet is vpn plugins.
> First, I think it would be great if k-n-m would display an overlay icon
> when it is connected to a vpn (similar to nm-applet)

This is easy.

> Second, password handling. Atm I have to type in the passwords every
> time because the vpn plugins use gnome-keyring internally for storing
> its passwords.

Correct.

> I think there are two ways to handle this:
> k-n-m could start gnome-keyring-daemon (if existent) and pass the
> environment variables GNOME_KEYRING_SOCKET and GNOME_KEYRING_PID (which
> are returned by g-k-d) to the vpn plugin.

Hm?  That's what KNetworkManager currently does.  See initKeyring (),
knetworkmanager-vpn.cpp:378.

I'm wondering why it does not work for you.  I'm using the VPN stuff on
a daily basis and never typed the password twice ;-)

> Or k-n-m could store the vpn passwords itself in kwallet and directly
> pass it to the vpn-plugin?

The whole VPN stuff is in a bad state as the NM VPN modules provide
their own (a) configuration tool and (b) password dialog.  (b) is
necessary as one VPN module requires only one password, the next module
requires two passwords etc.

So... If we want to integrate VPN in a proper way we have directly work
on the VPN modules which are currently only providing their UI fitting
in the GNOME environment.

> Thoughts, comments?
> Michael

   Timo