On Thu 26 May 2016 at 17:05:02 -0500, David Wright wrote: > On Thu 26 May 2016 at 20:29:30 (+0100), Brian wrote: > > > Life is too short to worry about whether network-manager delivers the > > goods. Just use ifupdown and wpa_supplicant and you will live happily > > ever after. > > > > People are fixated on wicd. What is so wrong with wpagui? > > Finding I had this installed, I ran it. I think I would need to set > some configuration to allow that to work. That might be why it's in > /usr/sbin.
A couple of lines in an /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf and a stanza in /etc/network/interfaces is needed for a roaming configuration. After that, connecting to a wireless network with wpagui is as simple as you describe for wicd. > So, to root, where I generally won't run gui applications. So I ran > /sbin/wpa_cli instead. "status" looked fine, and "interface". > I tried "set": > > > interface > Available interfaces: > wlan0 > > set > Invalid SET command - at least 2 arguments are required. > > > > That doesn't quite chime with: > > set set variables (shows list of variables when run without > arguments) Someone got there before you. Bug #819229: https://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-wpa-devel/2016-March/004142.html > Most of the commands look rather low-level. So I quit. wpa_cli is not something I would recommend to a user. However, if it does not work you can be virtually certain there is a problem with your device or the supplicant. wpagui uses wpa_cli. > It doesn't seem to have a curses interface like wicd. Configuring with > that is a piece of cake. IIRC the hostname is filled in for you, so > all I had to do was pick an AP, press →, fill in the Key (it checks > "Use Encryption" automatically) and check the desired options: > "Use these settings for all networks sharing this essid" and > "Automatically connect to this network", then press F10 to save. Wicd and network-manager have the advantage over wpagui of dealing with other than wireless. However, I quite like wpagui's direct interaction with wpa_supplicant and not having to consider whether a problem lies with some other program. Without wpagui, editing wpa_supplicant.conf is relatively straightforward.
