Networkmanager issues on OpenSUSE 11.0 (Gold Master)

Gold Master is basically the final version that will be released in 2-3 days. A few issues I encountered during my use of the NetworkManger, but also some good news.

First of all, I am using a Intel 3945ABG network card with the default ipw3945 kernel drivers.

The good news is that once installed SSID’s are automatically detected and WEP and WPA encryption works out of the box.

The issues are as follows.

  • When booting from the KDE4 32-bit live CD the Networkmanager does not detect and SSID’s, manually configuration is still possible though.
  • (Once installed) Networkmanager does not seems to detect WPA Enterprise networks, manually configuration does not allow for Phase2 configuration (see screenshot below).

http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/8606/networkmanagerma8.png
(more detailed screenshot)

If anyone has a solution, or a work around, or an update for the network manager (and a repository to find it) I’d greatly appreciate it. Of course it might be possible to set things up with a properly configured wpa_supplicant.conf file but that is usually a lot harder to accomplish due to the abundance of options (and of course impractical if you’re on a laptop and switching networks often).

PS: sorry for not posting in the Wireless category, I only just noticed this forum has a sub-forum ‘Wireless’ - a mod can move it there of course.

you are using live cd which probably won’t help much, since less software on that. i use the same card as you, haven’t had the laptop long but wireless works fine on 10.3 and 11.0 rc1 for me. interesting you say default driver of ipw, since that was my default on 10.3, but on 11 rc1 the default was iwl driver, you may want to try this out? as i say, wireless on 11.0 worked so easily for me on wpa network as well as wep.

It’s the iwl3945 driver, not the ipw3945. Thank for pointing that out. As for using the Live CD, I’m not complaining it didn’t detect the SSID’s right then and there, I could still connect to my AP manually. Afterward of course I installed all the packages that would otherwise have installed from the DVD, I don’t think I’m missing anything.

So the problem here is that I can’t select the Phase2 type (there is nothing to select), and my University uses EAP=TTLS and Phase2=PAP authentication on the network. Unfortunately my options for testing are limited since I can only test this when I’m at the university.

jsnel wrote:

>
> It’s the iwl3945 driver, not the ipw3945. Thank for pointing that out.
> As for using the Live CD, I’m not complaining it didn’t detect the
> SSID’s right then and there, I could still connect to my AP manually.
> Afterward of course I installed all the packages that would otherwise
> have installed from the DVD, I don’t think I’m missing anything.
>
>

Try also installing the ipw driver from the RC1 DVD, the one marked
ipw-firmware-8-81.noarch.rpm. Configure your wireless and reboot.

Do NOT use ipw-firmware-8-82.noarch.rpm from the non-oss repo.

Bob Smits, Ladysmith, BC

“What a wonder is USENET; such wholesale production of conjecture from such
a trifling investment in fact.” – Carl S. Gutekunst

Thanks for all your input. Via the Networkmanager mailing list I found out it was indeed a bug and that work in underway to fix it (thanks Helmut Schaa), the latest SVN build should already provide support for TTLS, read more about the bug here:

https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=396347