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Bug 578906 - please refer to nm-applet from NM and nm-tool manpages [was: please document at least a minimum]
please refer to nm-applet from NM and nm-tool manpages [was: please document ...
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: NetworkManager
Classification: Platform
Component: nm-applet
0.7.x
Other Linux
: Normal enhancement
: ---
Assigned To: Dan Williams
Dan Williams
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2009-04-14 08:19 UTC by Tomas Pospisek
Modified: 2013-02-15 22:22 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
add reference to nm-applet to NetworkManger man page (222 bytes, patch)
2009-04-14 08:25 UTC, Tomas Pospisek
none Details | Review
add reference to nm-applet to nm-tool man page (215 bytes, patch)
2009-04-14 08:26 UTC, Tomas Pospisek
none Details | Review
nm-applet man page (501 bytes, patch)
2009-04-14 08:26 UTC, Tomas Pospisek
none Details | Review

Description Tomas Pospisek 2009-04-14 08:19:25 UTC
Before upgrading from Ubuntu Heron to Intrepid, when I'd left-click on the nm-applet it would show me all available wireless connections.

Not so after the upgrade.

Right-clicking on it tells me that:

- Networking is enabled
- Wireless is also enabled

However left-clicking shows both Cable Networking and Wireless greyed out.

Why?

How can I find out why?

Is there any documentation anywhere?

Is there any help text anywhere?

"ps auxw" will show a plethora of network related processes. Among which:

nm-applet --sm-disable

Uhm. What could possibly "--sm-diable" mean? "Satan really Means it" or "Mama Said" or "Sadistic Maintainers" or maybe (struck my a sudden divine enlightenment) "Scanning Mode"-disable?

Let's see:

$ man nm-applet
No manual entry for nm-applet
See 'man 7 undocumented' for help when manual pages are not available.

$ nm-applet --help

** (nm-applet:18980): WARNING **: <WARN>  applet_dbus_manager_start_service(): Could not acquire the NetworkManagerUserSettings service as it is already taken.  Return: 3


(nm-applet:18980): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed


Yuk!

$ man NetworkManager
[...]
$ man nm-tool
[...]
neither will even mention nm-applet

$ ls /usr/share/doc/network-manager*

(-> first mention of nm-applet)

Whatever. Killing nm-applet and restarting it without that switch actually will show me available networks again. Nice. So has this been a policy change to "protect the idiot user again information overflow or doing anything illegal according to the high moral principles of gods own chosen DRM Bush administration"?

Thus the next question. How does this switch actually get set? Will I need to grep binaries and patch them? Well another luck strike on Google led showed me a path and I edited /etc/xdg/autostart/nm-applet.desktop and disabled the switch there. Will it work next time I reboot?

So here we are 1.5h later and all this would be remedied with a minimum of documentation.

Here we go:

$ diff -u NetworkManager.8.orig NetworkManager.8
--- NetworkManager.8.orig	2009-04-14 10:07:57.000000000 +0200
+++ NetworkManager.8	2009-04-14 10:08:14.000000000 +0200
@@ -25,3 +25,4 @@
 .SH SEE ALSO
 .BR NetworkManagerDispatcher (8),
 .BR nm-tool (1)
+.BR nm-applet (1)

$ diff -u nm-tool.1.orig /tmp/nm-tool.1
--- nm-tool.1.orig	2009-04-14 10:10:14.000000000 +0200
+++ nm-tool.1	2009-04-14 10:10:41.000000000 +0200
@@ -13,3 +13,4 @@
 .SH SEE ALSO
 .BR NetworkManager (8),
 .BR NetworkManagerDispatcher (8)
+.BR nm-applet (1)

$ cat nm-applet.1 
.\" nm-applet(1) manual page
.\"
.\" Copyright (C) 2009 Tomas Pospisek
.\"
.TH Network Manager Applet "1"
.SH NAME
nm-applet \- network manager applet
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B nm-applet [\-\-sm-disable]
.SH DESCRIPTION
The \fInetwork manager applet\fP is a graphical application that
wants to make network configuration and management as painless
and easy as possible for the user.
.SH OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
.TP
.I "--sm-diable"
Don't do wireless network scanning
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR NetworkManager (8),
.BR nm-applet (1)
Comment 1 Tomas Pospisek 2009-04-14 08:23:18 UTC
See also http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=559881#c2
Comment 2 Tomas Pospisek 2009-04-14 08:25:02 UTC
Created attachment 132628 [details] [review]
add reference to nm-applet to NetworkManger man page
Comment 3 Tomas Pospisek 2009-04-14 08:26:04 UTC
Created attachment 132629 [details] [review]
add reference to nm-applet to nm-tool man page
Comment 4 Tomas Pospisek 2009-04-14 08:26:31 UTC
Created attachment 132630 [details] [review]
nm-applet man page
Comment 5 Pablo Castellano (IRC: pablog) 2010-01-02 01:54:31 UTC
I can confirm it. I was also wondering what --sm-disable meant and I couldn't find it
Comment 7 Dan Williams 2010-04-08 17:49:28 UTC
Actually --sm-disable has nothing to do with scanning; it's a left-over from when the applet was a panel applet and was "Session Managed".

nm-applet now has help text: nm-applet --help.  I'm not really sure we need a manpage for it, since most GUI programs don't have manpages.
Comment 8 Tomas Pospisek 2013-02-15 14:07:01 UTC
Since nm-applet does now have a man page, could you please reference it from the NetworkManger and nm-tool man pages as proposed by the patches attached to this bug report?

Thanks,
*t
Comment 9 Dan Williams 2013-02-15 22:01:24 UTC
nm-applet and nm-connection-editor manpages committed to git master and nma-0-9-8 branches.
Comment 10 Dan Williams 2013-02-15 22:22:19 UTC
So the situation is a bit more complicated than adding nm-applet, because there's also the KDE applet and the GNOME Shell applet, and neither of those are actually programs that have manpages like nm-applet is.  We have the same issue for nm-connection-editor, since on GNOME you'll most often be using the Control Center and on KDE you'll be using their system preference panels instead of nm-connection-editor.

In any case, added them to the manpages based on your patch.

7b9a581d9c5b0856f1d4e403449f512d812cb584

THanks!