KNetworkManager

[Will Stephenson]

On Tuesday 24 November 2009 13:58:03 Timothy Murphy wrote:
> What exactly is the purpose of KNetworkManager?

What exactly is missing from http://en.opensuse.org/Projects/KNetworkManager, 
the first google hit for 'knetworkmanager'?.

> I assumed it would have a GUI,
> which would enable me to set some parameters for NM,
> but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Yes, it does.  More info and screenshots:
http://dot.kde.org/2009/11/07/introducing-kde-4-knetworkmanager

> I just installed KNetworkManager,
> and I have an NM icon in my panel.
> When I left-click on this,
> I am asked a question,
> "Another NetworkManager client is already running.
> Use KNetworkManager in future?",
> but neither of the options offered seems to me
> to be an answer to this question.

NM allows one and only one user client to provide it with settings (via a DBUS 
service.  This warning appears if KNetworkManager is unable to start because 
another client already owns the settings DBUS service.  Distributions should 
prevent multiple NM clients being installed but since NM is a can of worms I'm 
not surprised if they get it wrong.

I've made the warning clearer in trunk already, but I guess you are using a 
packaged earlier version.

Anyway, solutions: I'm going to put my finger in the air and guess that you're 
either

a) using GNOME's nm-applet, for example in a KDE install in Fedora.  In which 
case you need to stop nm-applet autostarting in KDE or uninstall it.

b) or are running Kubuntu and have still got their earlier packaging of the 
Network Management plasmoid installed, which includes a headless 
NetworkManager client as a module for kded.  I don't know exactly what the 
package name is, but you should find out and uninstall it, then go and tell 
your distribution that they should have set a Conflicts on both packages 
preventing them from being installed simultaneously.  If I'm right about it 
being Kubuntu then to complicate matters, they ship KNetworkManager in a 
package called something like kde4-plasmoid-knetworkmanager when it isn't a 
plasmoid at all.

c) running openSUSE in which case the joke is on me.

If none of these help, try killing nm-applet or cnetworkmanager, or a 
knetworkmanager instance running as another user or a KDE 3 knetworkmanager, 
or unload the kded module with "qdbus org.kde.kded /kded unloadModule 
networkmanagement". 

More technical information:
http://userbase.kde.org/NetworkManagement

> And I cannot find any documentation on this program.

I haven't written any docbook for it yet.  I'm off to bake scones now.

Will