8 ms·
TUI for Managing WiFi on Linux
- 0x1ceb00da 2y agoDoesn't nmtui come installed by default?
- arlort 2y agoOnly if your distro uses network manager This wraps iwd tools I think. Even though, to be fair to the spirit of your comment, I don't see anything in the readme offering significant more functionality than iwctl
- eqvinox 2y agoThe chances that your distro ships with network manager are multiple orders of magnitude higher than it shipping with iwd though… I don't think iwd is the default anywhere? FWIW there's also wpa_cli which tends to work almost always (since everything wraps wpa_supplicant in the end), but it's a CLI rather than a TUI, and not a particularly usable one.
- Vogtinator 2y agoiwd is an alternative to wpa_supplicant, not NetworkManager. NM has support for iwd.
- dotancohen 2y ago> everything wraps wpa_supplicant in the end What should I be reading to understand exactly how the pieces fit together? I'm on Kubuntu, and have been suffering wifi disconnects for years across multiple computers with multiple USB wifi dongles and multiple access points. Literally not a bit of hardware shared, not even the access points. I suspect that Kubuntu shuts down USB wifi dongles after a period of time, as the only reliable way to get back online is to simply disconnect then reconnect the USB dongle. I forget what dmesg says (on mobile now) but it's something to the effect of a voluntary disconnect.
- usr1106 2y agoWe had disconnects in our office (so very different machines, different Linux distros and a Mac at least). Don't remember for sure, I believe the message was reauthentication successful and after that connection was lost. The AP runs OpenWrt. We worked around it by changing the reauthentication interval to 8 hours. Those working longer have to deal with it... Yeah, it's probably a weaker security now...
- mkl 2y agoI've never had that problem on Kubuntu, so it's not a general Kubuntu issue. Multiple different access points, but just one PCIe wireless adapter (identified as "Qualcomm Atheros AR93xx Wireless Network Adapter").
- dotancohen 2y agoIs that adapter on the motherboard, PCI, or Usb? I'm starting to suspect that the problem is with the USB connection.
- mkl 2y agoIt's a PCIe card. Bought in 2016, seems to be this: https://www.tp-link.com/us/home-networking/pci-adapter/tl-wdn4800/ https://www.tp-link.com/us/home-networking/pci-adapter/tl-wd...
- dotancohen 2y agoPerfect, thank you.
- crabbone 2y ago> wifi disconnects This is more likely to be a driver issue than management issue. I think, this was posted to HN before, but I cannot find the article right now, but the gist of it is: both WiFi h/w vendors and Linux driver authors are to blame for the dismal state of events. On the h/w vendor side everything as per usual: no drivers, or broken drivers, incorrect product labeling or self-identification, false or imprecise advertisement of available features. On Linux side: slow inclusion of community-provided drivers for various WiFi modems, no real effort at cataloging and unification / systematization of available drivers. My experience so far is this: Intel h/w is the one that has best Linux support. So, if you are on Realtec or Mediatec, you are getting the short end of the stick. Another universal problem: WiFi protocol keeps iterating at a relatively high speed. Which means that you are often in a situation where either your modem or your router don't speak the same protocol at a good level, and the middle-ground that they find is not well-supported or, sometimes will only be found after lengthy unsuccessful attempts by both sides to do the handshake. This is often also exacerbated by the management software which may misidentify these "handshake problems" and "solve" them by restarting something in the network stack, essentially sending you into an infinite loop of trying to connect. In my unfortunate case with my latest PC build, I had to swap three WiFi modems before I found one that worked satisfactory with the router I have. So, if you have some extra $ to throw at your problem: maybe try getting another WiFi modem?
- matoro 2y agoiwd does not wrap wpa_supplicant, it's a from-scratch implementation and a much nicer one at that.
- cassianoleal 2y agoIt looks like it wraps NetworkManager or ConnMann - both of which wrap around wpa_supplicant for wifi. So yep, iwd wraps wpa_supplicant. Architecture diagram on home page: https://iwd.wiki.kernel.org/ https://iwd.wiki.kernel.org/
- bmicraft 2y agoNetworkManager can use iwd as a wifi backend instead of wpa_supplicant, but nm isn't needed as iwd can also manage the networks on its own. iwd should never run at the same time (on a single network interface) as wpa_supplicant, as wpa_supplicant is (almost?) entirely superseeded by it.
- cassianoleal 2y agoOh ok, so I misread the arch diagram. I thought that iwd was talking to the iwd backend, which would then delegate to NM or CM. It looks like you're right [0], so I stand corrected. It also looks like it can't fully replace wpa_supplicant though: > IWD and the NM backend are work in progress and the capabilities are still limited. [0] https://iwd.wiki.kernel.org/networkmanager https://iwd.wiki.kernel.org/networkmanager
- zamadatix 2y agoThat paragraph of the article looks to be ~6 years out of date according to the network manager version number it lists, around the time of the initial iwd release, and the whole article seems to be at least 2-3 years out of date since then iwd is well into version 2.x now. Distros like Ubuntu have defaulted to iwd as the NM backend for Wi-Fi for a couple years (and now in the LTS version). It really is a quite popular and stable replacement to wpa_supplicant.
- arlort 2y ago> multiple orders of magnitude higher than it shipping with iwd though Even if that were true (and ignoring the fact that they aren't alternatives to each other, like other comments point out) If you're on a distro with iwd you might still want a TUI without having NetworkManager installed. A tool doesn't need to be universally needed to be useful
- kristopolous 2y agowpa_supplicant is a buggy hot mess with very little effort in the way of accepting patches, from me or anyone else. Iwd is a separate program and actually works. Try it out. It doesn't suck
- jlarocco 2y ago> The chances that your distro ships with network manager are multiple orders of magnitude higher than it shipping with iwd though… I don't think iwd is the default anywhere? It doesn't matter what the default is, though. Some people don't use NM, and this tool is for them. > (since everything wraps wpa_supplicant in the end) That's not true. IWD doesn't require wpa_supplicant.
- eqvinox 2y agoWell, I showed off my ignorance of iwd quite effectively :) TIL it is a wpa_supplicant replacement. Sorry for the misinformed comment!
- Valodim 2y agoYes, but nmtui is terrible and I for one would welcome a replacement
- bmicraft 2y agoWhat do you feel is terrible about it? It has always done exactly what I needed it to do, while being much easier for occasional use than nmcli
- djfergus 2y agoThis looks really nice, I like the design, congrats. I’ve been getting into Arch (with Sway) recently and resisted installing something like this initially since as they say, the manual install process is the tutorial. Getting basic WiFi connected with DHCP on vanilla Arch requires enabling multiple services and conf file edits - you rage against the machine thinking why is it so hard but then realise you just learnt how to swap out any part of your network stack (or the other fun footgun of installing multiple conflicting network managers to intermittently and silently break your connection). Anyway, rant over, not going back to Ubuntu anytime soon.
- scottyeager 2y agoWelcome to the dark side :) I recently finally switched to NetworkManager after using Arch's netctl for years (since so long ago I don't remember why I picked it in the first place). It's been a nice experience so far and I don't have any reason to reach for something more minimal again for network management. That's the beauty of Arch—you will indeed learn a lot by default but all the options are there and well documented in the wiki of course. Anyway, have fun, and remember, it's not a partial upgrade if you didn't sync your package lists (that one took me too long to figure out). Breaking stuff is part of the fun and learning for sure, but to be honest maintaining Arch becomes rather routine after the initial learning curve. In a way even less so than non rolling distros since there's never a jarring version bump with some big changes. My current install has been chugging along for over seven years across two different laptops.
- somat 2y agoComing from openbsd, linux wifi management was a real disappointment. To be fair freebsd's wifi system was not very good ether. at a low level you needed to muck around with three different config programs to get it to work, and more often than not you did not want to touch any of that because it would interact badly with network manager, a 800 pound gorilla of a program containing more code and configuration options then most of openbsd. I am not ashamed to say that networkmanager always intimidated me. The amount of care the openbsd team puts into keeping it's system simple is very under rated. If unfamiliar, all you usually need for openbsd wifi is. ifconfig iwn0 join "essid" wpakey "itsasecret" jam 'join "essid" wpakey "itsasecret"' into your /etc/hostname.iwn0 and you are good to go.
- navane 2y agoBeautiful
- sach1 2y agoThis is awesome, I'm going to try this out because the first thing I do on an Alpine Linux desktop/laptop install is replace nm with iwd.
- ilius2 2y agoI wish they made a debian package that came with "iwd", to use after you installed Debian with a desktop, but NetworkManager is not installed for some reason!
- tracker1 2y agoWhile I tend to prefer gui, this seems really nice to have. I'd kind of like to see everything in the GTK Settings panel available in a friendly text ui form.
- juujian 2y agoThe number of times I have accidentally broken the wifi/Internet GUI on my os during updates, this could actually come in handy.
- OJFord 2y agoiwctl would be the built-in way (built-in in the sense that this already needs iwd, iwctl is the frontend that comes with). This is an alternative that gives it TUI vs just the interactive console. Not something I use enough to care what it looks, personally.
- lproven 2y agoWhat does this do that `nmtui` doesn't? https://www.computernetworkingnotes.com/linux-tutorials/the-nmtui-command-and-utility-on-linux.html https://www.computernetworkingnotes.com/linux-tutorials/the-... EDIT: OK, it doesn't need network-manager. But I suspect about 99% of Linux installations do have that installed already, and if you need to get online, it's more useful to know the existing tool than a clever alternative you don't have installed.