kde4 ksysguard aka system monitor

Tue Jul 21 06:17:09 BST 2009

James Richard Tyrer <tyrerj at acm.org> posted 4A650C65.3040900 at acm.org,
excerpted below, on  Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:31:33 -0700:

> Duncan wrote:
>> What's up with ksysguard's network

> You should get a job as a software tester!  Like me, you have a knack
> for finding things that don't work.

LOL!  Whenever I get new toys (software, hardware, doesn't matter), I 
like to try out all the functionality to see what it does, how it does 
it, and if it's something I could use.  If some of it doesn't work... 
particularly when I had found that it had worked and was useful in 
previous versions...

> Or, perhaps you simply have a run of bad luck.

I think it's mainly that I'm reasonably demanding both of my computer 
(hardware and software), and of the customizations I do on it.  

Years ago (late 2001), when I chose to upgrade to Linux (Mandrake 8.1 at 
the time) instead of MS Windows eXPrivacy (their loss, but I've way more 
money to spend on hardware now =:^), it took me three months of HARD work 
to change, but by the time I did, I had hand crafted (1) my LILO config 
(customized to boot Windows off the THIRD BIOS drive, telling it that it 
was the first), (2) my xf86config (customized to drive three monitors on 
two separate graphics cards using two different drivers), and (3) learned 
how to configure and build my kernel from sources, partly in ordered to 
get the graphics working the way I wanted.  This was before I had even 
finished deciding which apps and desktop I was going to use on Linux 
(kde, konqueror, kmail, but knode was crap for binaries if it did them at 
all so then gnome pan now gtk pan for news)

There's not /many/ folks that can say they took the Linux plunge that 
hard and fast, but I knew the hardware could do it, I knew Linux was 
supposed to be more customizable than MS Windows, and I was not going to 
rest until I either had it working as I wanted/needed/expected/demanded 
it work, or had satisfied myself that I knew exactly why it was NOT going 
to work at that time, what the alternatives were, and where on the 
process of getting it to work the development was.

Luckily for me, I got it all working the way I knew and demanded my 
computer work, because I had bought the various components with that in 
mind, having been checking Linux compatibility any time I upgraded 
anything for two /years/ before I actually switched.

Anyway, that ability to customize that I expect and even demand, of any 
software I'm going to run, is one reason i run Gentoo, and once I got it 
confirmed that the network monitoring was working for other people, I had 
a good idea what was missing.

> IIUC, your eth0 port is working correctly, but KDE4 doesn't find it.

Exactly.

> I had this problem.  I installed the widget and nothing was listed in
> the "Network Interface" list window.  I was going to try to trouble
> shoot it and when I got around to it, it has started to work.  Now it
> works and I don't know what, if anything I did. :-)

Arggh!  I /hate/ it when that happens!  Sure it's nice when something 
starts working, but if you don't know what was wrong and what fixed it, 
there's no reason to expect it to keep working, and every reason to 
expect it'll break again just as apparently randomly as it started 
working -- and when it does, you KNOW it's going to be at the worst 
possible moment, or Murphy's law wouldn't be Murphy's law!

> It is a strange irony that when KDE/Linux was harder to setup, it was
> easier to fix problems.  Now, this is supposed to "just work" and we
> don't really know how it works.

Indeed.

> The only thing I can tell you is that KDE4 depends on NetworkManager.  I
> don't know for sure, but I think that it uses this to find network
> connections.  This has a daemon "NetworkManager" and it will normally
> show as "sleeping" in KSysGuard.
> 
> I would first check to see that that process has been started, and if it
> isn't, then reinstall the binary for "NetworkManager".

That was my suspicion.  I haven't yet confirmed it, but I expect we're 
both correct in our speculative mapping, here.

You see, I don't have networkmanager installed /at/ /all/ and never 
have.  Solid, and perhaps a couple other components as I've not gone thru 
and checked everything yet, was installed with USE=-networkmanager, 
because I (apparently incorrectly) believed that all it was for was to 
screw up an already perfectly working network with some sort of automagic 
GUI config that would do /who/ /knew/ /what/ to the existing network 
config and functionality I already groke reasonably well.

So, I guess I cross my fingers and change the USE flag, remerge with --
newuse to catch anything that uses that flag besides solid (possibly 
setting the flag one way or the other for individual packages if it looks 
like it's wanting to screw other stuff up in the process), and cross my 
fingers and hope the screwing with an already perfectly configured 
network doesn't mess something else up in the process!

> If you installed a Linux or BSD distro, it is really the responsibility
> of your distro to do any necessary setup.  So, you might try the
> relevant distro mailing list.

Well, except where they've deliberately left the choice of the dependency 
and customization up to you.  Given your "Linux (mostly) From Scratch", 
you likely know that reasonably well yourself already, but Gentoo really 
does quite well in letting people have the same type of configurability 
and customization, while at the same time automating the process in 
general -- but with ebuilds and other scripts that can be individually 
customized even further where it doesn't fit a particular installation.

Of course, with that freedom to customize comes responsibility, and the 
chance to really screw things up if you don't take it seriously.  I 
definitely do, and run a relatively lean and hard customized system if I 
do say so myself, but by definition, particularly when working with 
software so out on the cutting edge as KDE 4 is, that DOES mean having to 
backup and rebuild stuff occasionally when I picked the /too/ lean (or 
too fat) choice, as it's becoming apparent I did here.

See what I mean about KDE 4 being harder on the power users and full 
customizers than on the ordinary joe user that doesn't tend to use the 
software to its full capacities, instead mostly sticking to the defaults, 
letting other people make the decisions for him?  Just as when I first 
switched to Linux back in 2001, when it was a tough switch for me, taking 
me three months to do what others with less demanding expectations of 
both themselves and their hardware could have done in 2-3 hours, but they 
would have "settled" in the process, while I ultimately got a system that 
met my expectations and fit my needs and method of working much like a 
glove, the same thing applies here, and it's an extremely tough switch 
for me in part because I DO have certain expectations and demands I make 
of both myself and my platform (hardware and software).  But it'll be 
well worth it in the end; I'm as confident of that here as I was of my 
switch to Linux back then.

So anyway... gotta quit with the messages and actually get to it, if I 
ever want to get it done. =:^)  But I have a reply to Matthew to compose 
first. =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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