# Something like NetworkManager ?



## Grenouille (Oct 28, 2016)

Hello,

In most GNU/Linux distributions, you have a kind of an applet to manage the network, which is very practical for a laptop which travels and doesn't always use the same network.

I mean, how can I have something like that in FreeBSD ?
As long as my laptop stays at home, there's no problem : it connects automatically to the wireless network I have set up during installation, but how can I configure it in order to use different wifi networks, depending where I am ?

Thank you !


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## Atsuri (Oct 28, 2016)

Network connections are handled by dhclient() and ifconfig(). The latter can be used to scan local networks and connect to them. However, I also never heard of GUI applets for either of those programs. There is one for `dhcpcd`, so who knows .


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## Phishfry (Oct 28, 2016)

There is a connection manager for wifi called net-mgmt/wifimgr


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## Atsuri (Oct 28, 2016)

Phishfry said:


> There is a connection manager for wifi called net-mgmt/wifimgr


The port description mentions only wpa_supplicant. Does it use `wpa_cli` to poll networks or relies on the FreeBSD facilities I mentioned earlier?


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## Grenouille (Oct 28, 2016)

Hmm, wifimgr seems the kind of thing I'm looking for, I'll try it !


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## ANOKNUSA (Oct 28, 2016)

Atsuri said:


> Does it use  wpa_cli to poll networks or relies on the FreeBSD facilities I mentioned earlier?



The project homepage says that it's just a front-end to wpa_supplicant(8). I didn't think ifconfig(8) handled encrypted connections, but the man page says it can handle WEP. But that's still unsuitable for wireless networks.

EDIT: To build upon what SirDice says below, I'll also add that NetworkManager for Linux is itself a sort of daemon/CLI application combination, and doesn't have a graphical interface by default. Desktop environments and third-party projects just offer graphical front-ends to it. wpa_cli(8) is basically the FreeBSD equivalent of NetworkManager for wireless connections, while ifconfig(8) is used for wired connections.


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## SirDice (Oct 28, 2016)

Note that FreeBSD's wpa_supplicant(8) differs in a lot of ways compared to Linux's wpa_supplicant. They are named the same and have the same function but they're not the same application.


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## kpa (Oct 28, 2016)

They should be both based on the same original implementation by Jouni Malinen (https://w1.fi/wpa_supplicant/) but I guess our version has diverged quite a bit because of differences in the networking stack and many of the details that go into configuring network intefaces and routes.


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## Yampress (Oct 28, 2016)

The worst thing in linux  is network manager.
It makes a lot of configuration problems.


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## kpa (Oct 28, 2016)

Yes but luckily there are sane alternatives. I'm quite fond of wicd myself.


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## jrm@ (Oct 28, 2016)

Please try the patch attached to PR 213827 for net/wpa_gui.  The pkg-message says you need to install/start security/wpa_supplicant, but after a bit of testing it seems to work well with wpa_supplicant from base.


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## Seagate (Jan 9, 2017)

According to this https://github.com/GhostBSD/networkmgr/issues/2 network manager from ghostbsd is in process.


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## rigoletto@ (Jan 14, 2017)

You my want to take a look in https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/50638/


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