[sugar] [PATCH] Trac #7480: Need to 'reset' the network configurations - short term fix

[Erik Garrison]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 10:26:08AM +0200, Morgan Collett wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 03:31, Erik Garrison <erik at laptop.org> wrote:
> > Attached is a patch which adds a 'reset network configuration' button to
> > the network tab of the sugar control panel.  Clicking this button simply
> > rotates the config file out of the way, saving it as
> > ~/.sugar/default/nm/networks.cfg.bak.NNN  (NNN is the number of
> > previously backed-up configs +1).
> >
> > This is just a short-term fix (hack) to resolve the problem of not
> > having any gui-level method to manipulate the nm network configarion.
> > Eben has noted that we would like to enable config panel level
> > manipulation of the networks.cfg stanzas; but this requires a bit more
> > code than this immediate fix.
> 
> This needs testing: in some cases NM replaces the config with what was there.
> 
> I added a different AP to my home network (in parallel with my
> existing AP). To get the XOs to associate only with the new AP, I
> thought I'd simply delete networks.cfg and then associate to the new
> AP. When I rebooted to make sure it did what I wanted, networks.cfg
> had both the old and the new APs. To end up with only the new AP in
> networks.cfg, I had to first associate to the new AP, then remove the
> old one from networks.cfg - then rebooting after that showed only the
> new one.

I did test this and saw that the networks.cfg file was written again.
It appeared that NM was rewriting the config whenever it associated with
an AP.  sjored notes that NM 0.6 behaves this way, but I'm not sure it's
an issue we are trying to address here.  I think the rationale for the
reset button is the following:

    "From the sugar control panel we need to be able to 'reset' or
remove the stored network configuration file. This is important to do
whenever someone makes a change to their AP settings, changes the
password, and it might also help us debug some of the problems we are
seeing with intermittent AP connections. " ( kimquirk, trac #7480 )

The scope of this fix is pretty small.  Just make sure that stored
passwords are reset, and clear out cruft from the networks.cfg file.  Am
I missing anything?  I don't think pushing a fix into NM 0.6 is a good
use of our time, so I'm not sure what else we can do.

Erik