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Thread: Server 13.04 Undesired default networking behavior for laptop

  1. #1
    Join Date
    May 2013
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    Question Server 13.04 Undesired default networking behavior for laptop

    Hi,

    I'm using Ubuntu server 13.04 on my laptop so that I can run OpenStack Grizzly & run OpenStack nested inside itself on it. I'll have a server & a laptop running the nested OpenStack cluster. This laptop is the first I'm installing the system to, and I've just begun.

    I have a KDE desktop installed to this laptop too, so that when I go to OpenStack meetups, I can take my OpenStack with me & get help with various issues I know I'll have with my installation. I want to be able to migrate a Windows 7 back & forth between the OpenStacks running inside my OpenStack cluster, and reach it via an rdp connection on the KDE desktop when its in the laptop, or from another desktop computer when its in the server.

    So my networking isn't behaving the way I need it to in the laptop, and I'm here to get help to make it work the way I need it to behave.

    The laptop has a wired connection that I use when its docked at home, and a WiFi connection I use on occasion when I work on the OpenStack installation from my desktop at my desk in the other room (and when I'm out & about in town), so I want to be able to use both of them with the OpenStacks, in a Multi-WAN failover setup, but that's beyond the scope of this post- configuring that's for another post, to happen at another time. I'm not worried about that right now, my concern now is this other behavior I see happening that I can't have happening with regard to the presence of networking at boot.

    I use the network-manager kde taskbar applet to handle the WiFi from the desktop, and it only works if the wired connection is plugged in at boot, otherwise, it stays idle, and isn't populated with the interfaces when I open it- if the wired connection is unplugged at boot. This is a problem, for when I want to use the WiFi, the network-manager applet is what I want to use to manage the SSIDs & their associated passwords.

    Another problem I have with the network-manager applet is that when I do leave the wired network plugged in, and am able to use the WiFi since the interfaces are populated inside the applet, the password isn't remembered in a profile for my home SSID, and I have to enter it each time, which is a problem, since I use a 20 character password with serious complexity, and I can't remember it- I have to look it up in my Blackberry each time I log on & use that connection, which is a problem. I'd like to solve that by providing that SSID's password in /etc somewhere but I don't know how WiFi works in /etc to know how to configure that- if it's in /etc/network/interfaces, I wouldn't know how that config would look, since I've only used that file ever for servers without WiFi.

    So I need to be able to use WiFi from the applet when the wired connection is unplugged- without having to have the wired connection plugged in at boot, and have it remember the password for my primary WiFi connection, which it ought to connect to automatically when its in range. And I'd like it to use the wired connection when its available, but I don't see where to configure a priority in the applet anywhere, either, so if someone knows how to do that somewhere I need to do that somehow, too.

    I hope someone knows how to make this work the way I need it to work, because right now I'm feeling rather hopeless with it the way it is. Something happens at boot where if it doesn't detect that wired connection, its as if the whole networking system doesn't get turned on, and the connections aren't available for the network-manager applet to manage to use WiFi on.

    I'm also interested in learning how the network-manager works alongside /etc/network/interfaces, and how I'm going to be configuring OpenStack to do its thing alongside network-manager doing its thing- I'll need to configure the wired & wireless as multi-WAN somehow, and although its not my priority, if anyone can provide an overview of how that's going to work out I'd be interested in getting a preview of how I'll be sorting that, too.


    Many thanks in advance.


    Regards,
    Chris
    Last edited by cbSSS; May 12th, 2013 at 02:19 PM. Reason: could be clearer

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