[pkg-fso-maint] wicd vs. wifi-radar (was Re: wicd now working?)

Luca Capello luca at pca.it
Mon Mar 23 01:18:58 UTC 2009


Hi there!

I am sorry to revive an old thread, but I have started to play with
graphical WiFi manager only now :-)

Disclaimer: I do not have preference between wicd or wifi-radar.  I just
want to discuss practical (disk space and runtime requirements) details.

On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:27:37 +0100, Steffen Moeller wrote:
> gregor herrmann wrote:
>> On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:39:37 +0100, Steffen Moeller wrote:
>>> The fyp folks also install wicd, and they add wifi-radar on
>>> top. Should that be mimmicked?
>> 
>> I never used wifi-radar but AFAIK it's similar to wicd. Installing
>> both sounds a bit like installing openoffice.org and then abiword
>> additionally.
>
> :)

Exactly, I would focus on one or the other and the winner seems to be
wicd.  However, because there is always an however...

>> Well, maybe wifi-radar is nicer/smaller/... than wicd but someone
>> needs to test it ...
>> 
>> Ah, one difference is: "You need to have root access to use this
>> program." (wifi-radar's description), so it's probably not that
>> useful if we change the default user from root to something else.
>
> Indeed.

Well, without having used wicd yet, it is clear to me that you need to
have root privileges in someway, since network interfaces configuration
(and wpasupplicant, in case) requires that.  Bug #519915 [1] in part
confirms it, as well as /usr/share/doc/wicd/README.Debian:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
From version 1.5.9-1 onwards, the wicd-client GUI will be available
only to users of the `netdev' group, so as to avoid users not 
enabled by root to change network configuration.
This means that, if you do *not* belong to that group, wicd-client 
will refuse to start with a permission denied error by DBus, as soon 
as installation succeeds.

To add yourself to the netdev group, ask your administrator to do, or
do as root yourself:

	# usermod --append --groups netdev <yourusername>

or:

	# adduser <yourusername> netdev

(obviously replace "<yourusername>" with the user you want to grant 
access to wicd-client to). This could also be done with graphical 
user management programs.

After you did this, you have to reload DBus by:

	# /etc/init.d/dbus reload
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

OTOH wifi-radar does not have this option and it always need to be
started as root.  However, reading /usr/share/doc/wifi-radar/README.gz I
discovered that it seems there is a way to use it with PAM
authentication.  I have not tried it yet and indeed it seems a bit too
sophisticated than wicd.

I think the major advantage of wifi-radar is the fact that is it way
smaller than wicd, 168kB vs. 2300kB, considering the dependencies as
well (wicd is not yet "compatible" with udhcpc, see bug #520014 [2]).

However, considering that wifi-radar does not even start on my FR (bug
#520845 [3]) and that anyway people will need to add their user to the
netdev group for frameworkd [4], the current situation is fine :-)

Thx, bye,
Gismo / Luca

Footnotes: 
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/519915
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/520014
[3] http://bugs.debian.org/520845
[4] http://lists.linuxtogo.org/pipermail/smartphones-userland/2009-March/001252.html
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