FWIW, the ConnMan DBus API would easily allow you to create a UI that says "Ethernet: disconnected" (or shows the appropriate icon, whatever you prefer.)
Posted Sep 7, 2011 23:42 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (subscriber, #755)
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Excellent... I wasn't the first person to complain about that.
In *fact*, the user isn't sitting in front of it -- it's often on a tower, stuffed under their desk, and the wire broke in a closet on the other end of the floor, where someone was working on a switch.
That status popup sure does save a lot of time in step one: "noticing there's a problem", doesn't it?