# NetworkManager without GUI?

## Mimamau

I just switched to NetworkManager and KNetworkManager. Before I used wpa_supplicant and just the config files. But I had trouble to connect to the network at university. They only got documentation for Ubuntu which uses NetworkManager so I tried that and it works!  :Smile: 

But the network only comes up when I'm logged in and KNetworkManager is started. In my opinion this isn't the UNIX way of doing things...

So is there a way of bringing up the network while booting?

What is NetworkManager? Does it still use wpa_supplicant? Can I see the configuration it uses to connect to the wireless network and copy that into my old config file?

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## d2_racing

 *Mimamau wrote:*   

> So is there a way of bringing up the network while booting?
> 
> What is NetworkManager? Does it still use wpa_supplicant? Can I see the configuration it uses to connect to the wireless network and copy that into my old config file?

 

Hi, maybe it should works with ifplug...

Also, I know that Networkmanager has a dependency with wpa_supplicant, but I don't know where are the config files for network manager.

http://www.gentoo-portage.com/net-misc/networkmanager/Dep#ptabs

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## ppurka

http://mvidner.blogspot.com/search/label/NetworkManager

Doesn't support WPA I think.

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## tadeboro

NetworkManager does support WPA and it uses wpa_supplicant as a backend. And this is all that I know about it, since I wasn't able to get it fully working on my system - at least not when I was booting into non-X-session.

If I may, I would suggest using wicd, which works like expected (or UNIX-style;-). wicd daemon takes care of the connection and wicd-remote provides the comfort of GUI. But even if you do not statrt your X server, the connection still comes up as it should.

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## ppurka

I do know that networkmanager supports wpa. What I had pointed out was the command line networkmanager frontend in the link.  It supports some parts of wpa, but does not support wpa2 at all.

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## Mimamau

Think I will give wicd a try, I need wpa2 enterprise.

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## d2_racing

Networkmanager support WPA2 enterprise for sure.

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## Mimamau

 *d2_racing wrote:*   

> Networkmanager support WPA2 enterprise for sure.

 

Yes, it works. But I'd like to have network ready before X and KDE.

Another thing is, that it doesn't work well with the iwlagn module. I often have to rmmod and modprobe until it works. But thats more a problem of iwlagn, I think.

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## d2_racing

Yeah, maybe you should make your wifi working with the wpa_supplicant package with net.wlan0 inside /etc/init.d and all the config that is required inside /etc/conf.d/net, mostly doing it the manual way.

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## Mimamau

Thats what I had before. Thats also why I'd like to know what NetworkManager is doing with wpa_supplicant to copy it over into the normal config file...  :Smile: 

I could post a screenshot of my working settings from NetworkManager, but I'm not at university right now and the network is not in reach, so I can't open the settings...

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