Lamarque's blog: July 2012

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Plasma NM 0.9.0.4

Plasma NM 0.9.0.4

SHA256Sum: 520d0592171ce1aa1c54916f408e7f2d1e016da0acefc725f7170b67a292e256

If you use WPA2 enterprise connections (like eduroam) please test this new release and check if the missing password field problem is fixed. Update: unfortunately the problem still happens.

Kubuntu packages:
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/quantal/i386/plasma-widget-networkmanagement/0.9.0.4-0ubuntu2

Please (K)Ubuntu users, upgrade your systems to the packages above before reporting bugs that has already been fixed. You can check the version number by clicking on "Manage Connections" button then on the "Other" tab. Also report Plasma NM's version number when reporting a bug.

Changelog:

279942: Add two tooltips to explain how to correctly configure TLS encryption using PKCS12 private keys.
302006: Properly fix this crash without side effects. VPNC group password decryption during importing a VPNC configuration file should work again now.
303155: Use different icons for wired interfaces when cable is plugged/unplugged.
302790: Show ad-hoc connections in connection list when "Show More" is active. If you create an ad-hoc connection you must click on "Show More" and then click on the connection to activated it. Wifi shared connections are always shown, so they do not need this. This feature are for those who want to use static IP configuration with ad-hoc connections.
302470: Change icons used in VPN import/export buttons in kcm.
. add support for network zones from FirewallD (requires NetworkManager >= 0.9.4.0).
293045: Remove warning message once NetworkManager is up and running.
302451: Fix issue when importing openvpn configuration files.
299868: Try to fix ask password dialog for WPA2 connections.

The following languages have more than 80% of strings translated:

ca cs da de el es et fi hu it km lt nb nds nl pl pt pt_BR sk sr sr@ijekavian sr@ijekavianlatin sr@latin sv uk zh_TW

Also read some usefull information about Plasma NM in my past posts.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Plasma NM: details editor

One more feature implemented in Plasma NM (and one more bug closed). I have added the button "Configure Details to Show..." to the kcm in master branch:

which launches the editor:

Well, I think what the editor does is almost self-explanatory. After editing what details to show they will appear in the interfade details window. The default details are the same ones currently used in master and nm09 branches. If you do not use the editor you will not notice any difference in the interface details window (actually there are some small changes in the labels).

Now that the editor is in place I can implement more details. For instance, the details in the "Available" list above work already and are new to Plasma NM. If you used to miss any of them you can enable them now :-) You can even change the order at they will appear on the interface details window too.

OBS: NetworkManager does not report the IPv4 gateway when the connection uses static IP address. I tested it with NM 0.9.2.0 and 0.9.4.0 using qdbus, so it is not a problem in Plasma NM.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Improving QtNetworkManager (former libnm-qt)

One of the big changes in master branch last year was the introduction of QtNetworkManager. Well, it still needs work and here I want to talk about what is needed:

Move the create/update/delete connections code to QtNetworkManager

The port of Plasma NM to use QtNetworkManager is not finished, one the things that must be done is move the code that creates/updates/deletes connections from Plasma NM to QtNetworkManager. It means moving most of the code in git://anongit.kde.org/networkmanagement/backends/NetworkManager/ to git://anongit.kde.org/libnm-qt/ and updating Plasma NM to use it. It sounds easy but it is not. The code in networkmanagement/backends/NetworkManager/ depends on some classes that belongs to Plasma NM and will not be moved, so new classes will have to be created to replace them.

Move the DBus parsing code to QtNetworkManager

This code is in git://anongit.kde.org/networkmanagement/backends/NetworkManager/connectiondbus.{cpp,h} and is essencial for any program that want to create connections with NetworkManager.

Create examples about how to use QtNetworkManager

This is a request that I received some time ago. I added some examples in git://anongit.kde.org/libnm-qt/examples. Some things cannot be done in QtNetworkManager yet (creating new connections is troublesome because the DBus parsing code is in Plasma NM right now). I need to finish that part before I can create examples of how to create/edit connections.

Anyone can help with those parts. It is not a simple task (if it were I would have done it long ago), if you think you are up to the challenge contact me :-)