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DevelopmentThe GNOME NetworkManager AppletEvery once in a while, your author stumbles across a really useful piece of software. It all started when I decided to do some experimentation with 802.11g wireless networking. I procured a Linksys WRT54G-v4 router, borrowed a Windows XP box to get the router going, connected it to my LAN and was "on the air". This router happens to allow uploading of open-source firmware, I plan on experimenting with that after I become comfortable with the technology in its native state.![[NetworkManager]](/images/ns/networkmanager.png)
The other end of my limited wireless network involves a desktop PC with a D-Link Air Plus Xtreme G DWL-G520 wireless card and a Hawking Technology directional antenna with 7db of gain. The antenna is an optional accessory that is useful for extending the range of the wireless connection. The desktop machine also has a wired 100-T ethernet card. The remote machine is running the Ubuntu "Breezy Badger" (5.10) distribution and the GNOME desktop. Ubuntu is fairly new to me, and I decided to see how far one could get with the GUI-based networking tools. I was able to simply plug in the D-Link card to the machine and boot, the card was auto-detected. In a similar experiment with a Fedora Core 4 system, the card was not detected. The GNOME network configuration tool is fairly straightforward, just click on the desired wireless interface and tweak the properties. It is sufficient for connecting the machine to a single wireless network, but becomes painful when experimenting with connections to multiple networks. Switching to a different network involves several minutes of waiting, and the signal strength information is missing. I want to be able to rotate my directional antenna in order to get the best signal on distant networks. The wireless-tools package contains the command line utility iwlist, which dumps out a bunch of information for each network that is in reception range. This can be useful for finding basic signal strengths, and seeing which channels are in use in your area. I configured my Linksys box to work on an unused channel. Enter NetworkManager. The Ubuntu package description for NetworkManager says:
NetworkManager attempts to keep an active network connection available at all
times. It is intended only for the desktop use-case, and is not intended for
usage on servers. The point of NetworkManager is to make networking
configuration and setup as painless and automatic as possible. If using DHCP,
NetworkManager is _intended_ to replace default routes, obtain IP addresses
from a DHCP server, and change nameservers whenever it sees fit.
To connect to a wireless network, just left-click the mouse on the network manager applet, and pick a network from the available list. Right clicking the applet brings up a list of configuration options. My neighborhood has an ever-changing number of wireless networks, most of them are configured with keys, a few of them are wide open. Keyed networks require you to enter the appropriate pass phrase.
After the network has been selected, the NetworkManager applet
lights up one, then two virtual LEDs to signal the steps in the
connection process. A progress bar and a fun spinning
comet are also displayed in the applet while connecting.
Once you successfully connect to a network, the applet icon will change
into a set of four signal strength bars, these change up and down
with the signal strength. Placing the mouse over the applet also
displays a numerical signal strength value, I leave my mouse in
this position and slowly rotate the antenna for best results.
NetworkManager has the ability to detect and auto-switch to a wired ethernet. This makes it especially useful for laptop users who frequently move between home, work and the internet cafe. Areas for improvementWhile very useful, NetworkManager is also fairly experimental software. The documentation is currently very sparse. It took a significant amount of digging to figure out how to get the nm-applet to show up on the desktop. (Hint: System->Preferences->Sessions->Startup Programs->Add).The signal strength display can be used for optimizing the antenna direction, but it is just slow enough to make this process painful. The update time is in the order of several seconds. This may be a limitation of the hardware. It would be nice if the channel number was displayed in the list of networks. Playing with the GNOME network configuration tool while NetworkManager was running caused my machine to hang, this isn't too surprising considering the various processes that are contending for the same resources, but it is nonetheless a "bad behavior". NetworkManager scores highly as a functional tool for automating the process of switching between wired and wireless networks, your editor plans on keeping this application around. Addendum: RedHat Magazine published a very informative article in January of 2005 entitled Introducing NetworkManager.
System Applications Database Software moodss 21.0 releasedVersion 21.0 of moodss, a graphical monitoring application, has been announced, it adds new database monitoring capabilities. "By finding the best of powerful statistical models, using sophisticated methods such as ARIMA (AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average) and artificial neural networks, *moodss* 21.0 can now predict the future behavior of data cells, from their history recorded in a SQL database. The new predictor tool, obviously ideal for capacity planning, will also allow, in upcoming releases, a system administrator to receive emails such as "on server foo.bar.com, the disk sdb is likely to become full in 3 weeks"."
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe January 22, 2006 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL database news and resources.
Interoperability Samba 4.0.0TP1 Available for DownloadVersion 4.0.0TP1 of Samba has been announced. "Samba 4 is the ambitious next version of the Samba suite that is being developed in parallel to the stable 3.0 series. The main emphasis in this branch is support for the Active Directory logon protocols used by Windows 2000 and above. Samba 4 is currently not yet in a state where it is usable in production environments."
Security nepenthes 0.1.6 released (SourceForge)Version 0.1.6 of Nepenthes has been announced. "Nepenthes is a low interaction honeypot designed to catch and store worms. The new version 0.1.6 offers some *major* improvements in recognizing shellcodes and compiling the code on different plattforms and operating systems."
Web Site Development Gallery 1.5.2 Release (SourceForge)Version 1.5.2 of Gallery, a web-based photo gallery application, is available. "This release fixes a possible XSS security problem, fixes bugs (including those found in all of the preview releases), and introduces several cool new features: image maps and downloading albums as zip files."
Silva 1.5 beta 1 releasedVersion 1.5 beta 1 of Silva, a web content management system, has been released. "Silva 1.5 is the first Silva release that really starts using Zope 3 technology in the core, and is the first step in a longer evolution. It does not have a lot of externally visible feature changes, but focuses on making Silva work with Zope 2.8 and Five 1.2."
Desktop Applications Data Visualization Titus' PyX Tutorial for Gnuplot UsersTitus Winters has written a tutorial on the use of PyX, the Python graphics package. "At some point, it is bound to happen. Gnuplot is wonderful, but there comes a time where it just doesn't quite have the power that you need it to have. Perhaps you want to radically alter the way the axes are drawn. Perhaps you just want to do something simple like change the color of a plot line, but not the pattern. Maybe you really need some hefty math symbols displayed on the graph. At some point you'll hit the wall beyond which Gnuplot quickly stops being the right answer. What works better in these situations?"
Desktop Environments Gnome 2.13.5 ReleasedGnome 2.13.5 has been released. "This is the last release in the 2.13 development series and represents a release that is now API/ABI and feature frozen."
GARNOME 2.13.5 Released (GnomeDesktop)Version 2.13.5 of GARNOME, the bleeding edge GNOME platform, has been announced. "This release includes all of GNOME 2.13.5 plus a whole bunch of updates that were released after the GNOME freeze date, plus a lot of tweaked build-magic. It is for anyone who wants to get his hands dirty on the development branch."
GNOME Software AnnouncementsThe following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
KDE Software AnnouncementsThe following new KDE software has been announced this week:
Desktop Publishing Scribus 1.3.2 Announced (KDE.News)KDE.News covers the release of version 1.3.2 of Scribus, an open source page layout program. "With this release we are excited to announce the first beta of Scribus on the Windows platform. With the gracious support of Trolltech AS, developer of the Qt C++ application framework, we are able to release Scribus on Windows with Qt 3. It also includes fixes for over 290 requests and bugs."
Electronics New gnucap development snapshotVersion 0.34 of Gnucap, the Gnu Circuit Analysis Package, has been announced. "This one adds a first cut at the MOSFET level 8 and 49 model. It accepts all of the parameters. A few parts of it need work ..."
Kicad 2006-01-19 releasedVersion 2006-01-19 of Kicad, a printed circuit CAD application, is out with a bug fix.
Qucs 0.0.8 announcedVersion 0.0.8 of Qucs, a circuit simulator, has been announced. "The new release comes with a translation into Turkish, two new diagrams - truth table and timing diagram. Non-Qucs files can be added to a project, matching circuits can be created and there is a dialog for changing the properties of several components at once. The filter synthesis tool supports some more filter types, many new models have been added to the component libraries and the DC bias can be annotated in the schematic. Also digital gates, correlated noise sources, an ideal coupler and mutual inductors are now supported."
Financial Applications The GNOME Invest AppletRaphaël Slinckx has announced his new Invest Applet for GNOME. "Stock trading is fun.. well, when you make money of course. There are days when you wish you didnt buy that crappy stock, today its intel. They released apparently bad numbers yesterday and took the plunge: This leads me to the introduction of Invest, a replacement/companion for gtik, the stock ticker currently in gnome applets. It allows one to create a portfolio, and track its progress in terms of gain/losses. It also features a yahoo graph viewer, with the options found on their website, very nerdy !"
SQL-Ledger 2.6.6 releasedVersion 2.6.6 of SQL-Ledger, a double entry accounting system, is out with bug fixes and some new capabilities. See the What's New document for change information.
Games Cyphesis 0.5.6 ReleasedVersion 0.5.6 of Cyphesis has been announced by the WorldForge game project. "Cyphesis is a small to medium scale server for WorldForge games, with builtin AI. This version includes the demo game Mason which is currently in development."
Interoperability Wine 0.9.6 releasedVersion 0.9.6 of Wine is available. Changes include: A bunch of OLE fixes and improvements, DirectSound improvements, including full duplex support, Fix for the Windows metafile vulnerability, Many static control improvements, Some fixes for copy protection support and Lots of bug fixes.
Music Applications hexter DSSI plugin 0.5.9Version 0.5.9 of the hexter DSSI plugin, a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer modeling DSSI plugin, is out with new MIDI control capabilities and bug fixes.
WhySynth DSSI plugin 20060122 releaseRelease 20060122 of WhySynth DSSI plugin, a software music synthesizer, is out with a new oscillator mode, a new filter mode, a dual delay effect, and more.
Peer to Peer phpMyBitTorrent 0.7.3 Unstable Released (SourceForge)Unstable version 0.7.3 of phpMyBitTorrent, a BitTorrent tracker with enhanced features, is out. "This new version is "just" a CVS Checkout made today. It has some interesting new features, like an implementation of the Award Winning FCKeditor, Project of the Month December 2005 on SourceForge.net. It will allow you to write Torrent Description in full XHTML and change that default Welcome Message with everything you want, even a Flash Movie!"
RSS Software lylina version 1.10 (SourceForge)Version 1.10 of lylina, an rss/atom aggregator, has been announced. "Among the many changes, highlights include: advanced CSS skinning support including support for small screen devices via a mobile stylesheet, social networking integration, the re-introduction of the classic lilina-style sources box, and internationalization with German language support. To complement to new features, v1.10 also offers cures for a few major bugs, including the errors in HTTPClient.php."
Video Applications First Beta Release of Ekiga 2.00 (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop looks at Ekiga 2.00, the successor to the GnomeMeeting video conferencing application. "After more than one year of active development, GnomeMeeting has reborn on the form of Ekiga. Ekiga is a SIP and H.323 application, supporting audio and video, and is the successor of GnomeMeeting." New features include better audio quality, echo cancellation, easier NAT transversal, an improved user interface, and better Video4Linux2 support.
Web Browsers Minutes of the mozilla.org Staff Meeting (MozillaZine)The minutes from the January 9, 2006 mozilla.org staff meeting have been announced. "Issues discussed include Firefox 1.5.0.1 release schedule, Thunderbird 1.5 release and Marketing."
Miscellaneous Blender 2.41 releasedVersion 2.41 of the Blender animation package has been announced. "With less than one month of development time, this has been a short and sweet release cycle. The focus of this release is the Game Engine which has added a number of nice new features such as GLSL shaders, the capability of using multiple materials and uv maps; multiple viewports; as well as a number of important fixes such as the return of the armature system." (Thanks to Tom Musgrove.) We took a look at Blender 2.40 a few weeks ago.
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe January 17-24, 2006 edition of the Caml Weekly News is online with new Caml articles. Topics include: GODI news, Constraints in module types, C interface style question, C-Interface: CAMLreturn and failwith, toplevel with pre-installed printers, Again C-Interface: caml_alloc_custom, Camlmix 1.3: OCaml-stuffed templates and Announcing OMake 0.9.6.8.
Java GNU Classpath 0.20 releasedVersion 0.20 of GNU Classpath, the essential libraries for Java, is out. Changes include: "New StAX pull parser and SAX-over-StAX driver. Full XMLEncoder implementation. The packages javax.sound.sampled, javax.print.attribute and javax.print.event have been implemented. Lots of new datatransfer, print, swing and swing.text work. Performance improvements in the painting/layout mechanism. Additional 1.5 support, including (separate) generic branch release. SecurityManager cleanups and start of review of all Permission checks. Buildable on cygwin. Fully buildable as "in-workspace" library-plus-vm inside (native) Eclipse. Real world Free Swing and CORBA example added."
Retrotranslator 0.9.7 released (SourceForge)Version 0.9.7 of Retrotranslator has been released with new features. "Retrotranslator is a Java bytecode transformer that translates Java classes compiled with JDK 5.0 into classes that can be run on JVM 1.4."
Perl Analyzing HTML with Perl (O'Reilly)Kendrew Lau uses Perl for HTML analysis in an O'Reilly article. "Routine work is all around us every day, no matter if you like it or not. For a teacher on computing subjects, grading assignments can be such work. Certain computing assignments aim at practicing operating skills rather than creativity, especially in elementary courses. Grading this kind of assignment is time-consuming and repetitive, if not tedious."
Using More Perl in PostgreSQL (O'Reilly)Andrew Dunstan continues his O'Reilly series on Using Perl in PostgreSQL with part two. "The first article in this series examined the use of PL/Perl to create triggers. The trigger inserted a row into a database table for audit purposes using a new PL/Perl method called spi_exec_query(). This article looks in more detail at uses of that function and its new cousin, as well as other features for handling bulk data and composite types."
PHP Alfresco PHP Library 1.1 Available (SourceForge)Version 1.1 of the Alfresco PHP Library has been announced. "We are proud to announce that V1.1 of the PHP Library to Alfresco is now available. This is a service-based interface to the Alfresco repository that allows PHP applications to access Alfresco content services."
Python python-dev SummaryThe December 16-31, 2005 edition of the python-dev Summary is online with coverage of the python-dev mailing list.
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!The January 23, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is out with a new collection of Python article links.
Ruby Ruby Weekly NewsThe January 22nd, 2006 edition of the Ruby Weekly News looks at the latest discussions from the ruby-talk mailing list.
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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![[local nets]](/images/ns/localnets.png)
In other words, NetworkManager provides a higher level system on top
of the existing network utilities. It also provides a useful
desktop applet for displaying connection information and switching
between networks.
![[NetworkManager Connecting]](/images/ns/netmgrconn.png){kind=small}
Networks with weak signal strengths will not connect, and both virtual
LEDs will not light up. Eventually, the connection attempt will time
out and the applet will display a not-connected icon.
Unlike the GNOME network configuration tool, NetworkManager allows
you to quickly abort a connection that is not succeeding, and switch
to another one.
![[NetworkManager Meter]](/images/ns/netmgrmeter.png){kind=small}