Created attachment 197416 [details] [review]
Don't autostart nm-applet in GNOME Shell

Created attachment 197420 [details] [review]
Don't autostart nm-applet in GNOME Shell

Before this patch, two password dialogs are shown when attempting to
connect to a new encrypted network, one provided by GNOME Shell, one
from nm-applet.

Currently the applet is still required by gnome shell for VPN connections.  But with recent changes to the shell and the control center network agent, you should only be seeing the shell's password dialog.  What version of gnome shell do you have?

GNOME Shell 3.2, gnome-control-center 3.2, etc., verified on Fedora 16 and Ubuntu 11.10.

Yes, I see now that VPN still requires nm-applet running.

I guess the nm-applet password dialog only shows when I cancel the first GNOME Shell password one.

With the changes from https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=658484, starting nm-applet for VPN support in GNOME Shell should no longer be necessary, should it? So, I guess the autostart in /etc/xdg/autostart for nm-applet can be removed.

However, I still wonder what will happen to other desktops which rely on nm-applet, like Unity on Ubuntu or XFCE4. For these, nm-applet will no longer be started automatically while at the same time they don't provide a built-in user interface for network manager unlike GNOME Shell.

Is there a way to resolve this conflict?

*** Bug 670708 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Where do we stand on this, Dan ?  I'd really like to see this happening for 3.8

There's something nm-applet does with mobile broadband card PINs that gnome-shell still doesn't do. It should be easy enough to add though. dcbw knows the details.

(In reply to comment #9)
> There's something nm-applet does with mobile broadband card PINs that
> gnome-shell still doesn't do. It should be easy enough to add though. dcbw
> knows the details.

The missing thing should probably be being able to unlock the modem without requesting to connect it; see bug 687855. Suggested approach is to have NM ask for the PIN secrets when we try to enable WWAN; as per bug 687908.

I think we should just drop nm-applet in 3.8, and live with the mobile broadband regression. I'm tired of duplicate dialogs.

(In reply to comment #11)
> I think we should just drop nm-applet in 3.8, and live with the mobile
> broadband regression. I'm tired of duplicate dialogs.

I don't think we want to live with the mobile broadband regression actually. If the PIN handling is added to the 3.8 blockers, I'm fine with seeing this done now.

(In reply to comment #11)
> I'm tired of duplicate dialogs.

we shouldn't be getting duplicate dialogs anyway... nm-applet tracks whether or not the shell is running, and is supposed to be unregistering its secret agent if the shell is there.

I can't get the nm-applet dialog to come up anymore. It seems the life-cycle issue of the shell agent have been fixed.
So, lets remove this from the blocker list.

oh, i forgot there was still a bug for this. this is done in git master

If I don't misremember, this still needs to be autostarted with Gnome 3.8, where can we find the commit to revert it and allow nm-applet to be autostarted again for 3.8? Thanks

nm-applet was needed in GNOME 3.6. The only thing it's needed for in GNOME 3.8 is sim card pin unlocking, and it's needed for that in GNOME 3.10 too, but the shell maintainers said they'd rather have that not work by default for the small number of people affected, than have occasional mistaken nm-applet password dialogs pop up for everyone. People can still start nm-applet by hand if they need it.

Hello, I need PIN code pop-up for customers who use 3G USB keys (under Ubuntu16/GnomeShell), so I tried to autostart again nm-applet. It works fine, and I have seen no side-effects yet (double dialog bug).
Is this patch (Don't autostart nm-applet in GNOME Shell) still relevant with recent packages ?
Is there likely to have another double dialog bug for me, if one day GnomeShell manage PIN code ?
Thanks.