GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 648430
[enh] FreeBSD support
Last modified: 2012-08-01 16:16:53 UTC
Because GNOME is so Linux specific, Networkmanager does not have the option of --with-distro=none to allow building natively on FreeBSD. Let me make the assumption that this will occur on any non-Linux system. Why didn't the developers ask who was using what before making the assumption of a Linux only application?
For the past: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-gnome/2006-May/014371.html ? For the current times probably udev is needed? However how is this realted to your request to add a new option?
Is there a known workaround for udev in FreeBSD or someway of using hal or dbus in place of it? The new option may- not sure- allow build on a FreeBSD system. I believe that Xfce recently had a set of questions on udev and BSD with a solution being made there. I can add or remove what is needed in configure and Makefile then build. Possibly add the options for wireless from such as the iwi(4) man page. Unfortunately, I don't have wireless on the SunBlade1000. An ethernet connection with ifconfig then using the active output as ifconfig $ETHERNET_CONNECTION to each. I have laptop I may be able to test wireless on.
NM does not support FreeBSD at this time, as we'd need to make some changes to abstract linux-isms. AFAIK FreeBSD doesn't have udev right now either, which makes hardware detection pretty hard, since all hardware detection in NM is done using udev. There would need to be some comparable FreeBSD daemon or service that does the same thing.
There is devd http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=devd&sektion=8 and devfs http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=devfs&apropos=0&sektion=8&manpath=FreeBSD+8.2-RELEASE&format=html . There is also devd.conf http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=devd.conf&sektion=5&apropos=0&manpath=FreeBSD+8.2-RELEASE. each wireless driver has its own man page. The user would need to recognize the driver from ifconfig or a script could scan dmesg . For wireless, one would need this script: ifconfig wlan create wlandev $WIRELESS_DRIVER To scan: ifconfif wlan0 scan && ifconfig wlan0 list scan To connect: ifconfig wlan0 ssid $ACCESS_POINT DHCP should be automatic for wired devices.
Reopening as I think the scope of this bug report is clear. However, I feel this is a WONTFIX unless somebody comes up with a nice patch.
There is supposed to be a google project for FreeBSD and NetworkManager. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=+Nikhil+Bysani&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq= You could try contacting the person to see what the status is.
Still valid AFAIK. I'm keeping this bug to track *any* progress in getting NetworkManager to FreeBSD. But be warned. Many things in NetworkManager are just linux specific. For example the whole IP layer is done with NETLINK. Abstracting this would be a *huge* lot of work. Anyone who would like to work on it, should first contact the NetworkManager developers and/or drop a note under this 'feature request' to coordinate his work with continuous changes in the NetworkManager. I'm dropping some ideas for the NETLINK part just in case: You would have to design an API to learn about various link, IPv4 and IPv6 changes in the network. It would have to support both following the changes and making them. Then Linux/NETLINK and FreeBSD implementations of this API would have to be done.
Closing until someone is interested in the huge work of porting to FreeBSD.