[ltp] knetworkmanager failing for non-root (SuSE 10.2, KDE)

[Tim Prince]

Joerg Bruehe wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> I'm not sure whether the following problem is specific to a Thinkpad,
> but I hope some of you might have info which helps me solve it.
> 
> And yes, I used Google and found some info mentioning my symptom, but no
> hint which really solved it - all I found seems to be applied already.
> 
> 
> 
> On my Thinkpad R51, I run SuSE 10.2 and use KDE.
> 
> All is fine (for my needs), including networking via cable.
> 
> What does *not* work for me is "knetworkmanager":
> In the task bar, it displays a plug outside the socket, and this is
> accompanied by a tiny white "x" in a red field.
> When I click its icon, the popup contains the German equivalent of "no
> network device found".
> 
> However, I know the hardware is available, and it works when I access it
> as "root" and also when I boot SuSE 9.3
> 
> It seems to be a permission issue: When I terminate "knetworkmanager"
> and restart it manually, I get a message
>       Error requesting name, org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.AccessDenied:
>       Connection ":1.34" is not allowed to own the service
>       "org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerInfo" due to security policies
>       in the configuration file
> However, the configuration file looks ok to me.
> 
> The configuration file "knetworkmanager.conf" looks ok to me, especially
> it contains an entry that allows using it for console users:
>         <policy at_console="true">
>                 <allow own="org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerInfo"/>
>                 ...
> 
> When installing software, I am quite selective and tend to de-select
> components of which I do not assume to need them, unless the RPM
> dependency check tell me to install even those components.
> 
> Google searching mentioned a module "pam-console" that might be needed,
> but SuSE 10.2 does not contain it.
> What I have installed (and looks related) is this list:
>   ~> rpm -qa | sort | egrep 'pam[^a]|hal|dbus|Network'
>   dbus-1-1.0.0-7
>   dbus-1-glib-0.71-26
>   dbus-1-qt3-0.62-38
>   dbus-1-x11-1.0.0-7
>   hal-0.5.8_git20061106-31.3
>   hal-resmgr-0.1_SVNr124-20.1
>   NetworkManager-0.6.4-51
>   NetworkManager-kde-0.1r606753-17.1
>   pam-0.99.6.3-29.1
>   pam-config-0.13-8
>   pam-modules-10.2-31
>   yast2-pam-2.14.0-31
> 
> So could those of you for who "knetworkmanager" works, especially if
> they use SuSE, please send me a list of the relevant modules they have
> installed, or give other hints if they have any ?
> 
I can't say I'm proud of the way it works for me on T40.
On SuSE 9.3, a working wireless connection is seldom made while booting,
but nearly always is corrected by searching for connections and
re-opening, requiring re-entering all WEP data.  Once in a while, 9.3
reverses eth0 and eth1, breaking the network card configurations.
Running 'network restart' is no help, as it was in 9.2 (which no longer
can install, after BIOS updates).  iwconfig is nearly always capable of
establishing an association, but it's of no use in the "managed"
configuration.
On 10.3, the connection frequently is dropped, even after right clicking
the little red x and re-connecting.  Eventually, a stable connection is
achieved.