Network does not fall back to LAN if WLAN fails

[dittaeva]

Say you use the wrong wireless settings in your config, or the SSID or key for your wireless network is changed before you get a chance at changing them in the config panel. At the moment it seems Webconverger will try using its wireless settings, and if the network isn't present (at least this unencrypted one) then it will give itself an "internal" IP address, continue to the configuration phase (tools icon) and stall even though it is connected to LAN. Thus there is no way of updating its configuration to the new wireless network.

Had this problem with C8E8FC81-47C6-11CB-9433-A529317818FB;00:11:25:49:79:73
and C62BCE60-AC90-11DC-A70E-00A0D1A300D4;00:a0:d1:a3:00:d4

With the settings
wpa-ssid=Breheimsenter-gjest
wpa-key-mgmt=NONE

[dittaeva]

Does this have anything to do with IDs (or is that another issue?)?

I ran a Lenovo Thinkpad X301 from an flash drive already installed and configured for another machine using WLAN. I then added it to the config panel (by way of the config link in about:). Then I rebooted and installed (using another flash drive) to HD. When booting from the HD, it did not have the config and did thus not know to connect to WLAN, so it was connected to LAN. When it had connected to the network, it did not fetch its config and so I added it to the config panel again. I now seem to have two IDs for the same machine: 94319C81-49A2-11CB-8822-CFCEA1875279;00:21:6a:04:3b:f2 (WLAN), and 94319C81-49A2-11CB-8822-CFCEA1875279;00:21:86:a2:3c:33 (LAN).

[dittaeva]

It seems fallback works if the WLAN hardware does not work at all.

[kaihendry]

I've tested this countless times and it works like I want for me. :)

In the future, I aim to switch to systemd-networkd, which makes network management a little easier to follow/debug.

[dittaeva]

Does that mean it should fall back to LAN if it fails to connect to wireless? Because the only time it does that for me is when it doesn't have supported wireless hardware. Looking back I see that I noted this on the mailing list already in July 2011.

One consequence is that you have to reinstall if the settings of the wireless network at your site changes, so it is quite debilitating.

[kaihendry]

Maybe I have failed to grasp this issue. IIRC, if eth0 is connected, it should route through eth0 through Debian's hotplug feature.

[dittaeva]

I can do some debugging at a later time, but don't have time now.

[kaihendry]

This should be fixed with a transition to systemd-networkd.

[dittaeva]

Does that transition happen in jessie?

[kaihendry]

Well... it should be... but systemd is very controversial, so I've been stalling how to deal with #202

Debian's ifupdown interface probably should move to systemd style, which would solve your issues since it's a bit smarter on how it detect interfaces.

[kaihendry]

Care to test again with http://build.webconverger.org/latest.iso please? :)

[dittaeva]

Dont't have time, sorry.