How can I use NetworkManager with i3?

asked Jun 4 '12

Michael
3081 ●13 ●28 ●50 http://i3wm.org/

When running i3, how can I use NetworkManager to configure wireless/wired connections?

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answered Jun 4 '12

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Just start nm-applet when launching i3. So, in your i3 configuration file ~/.i3/config, add a line saying:

exec --no-startup-id nm-applet

Also note that you need to have a proper ConsoleKit session running to be authorized to use NetworkManager. You can verify that using ck-list-sessions | grep is-local which should print is-local = TRUE. In case you see FALSE there, use a display manager like gdm to login and start i3. It will not work with xdm currently (as of 2012-06-04), unless you use a patched version.

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This works and has worked for me for a few years. However, I've had strange issues with mouse under-clicks after resume. I never known it's related to nm, but when I stopped using it, the issues stopped. I'm now using netctl.

yhager (Jan 25 '15)edit

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answered Jun 5 '12

Benoitt
21 ●2

You can also use Wicd-ncurses who is a cli software for network management.

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That is totally awesome. Thanks a bunch.

majkinetor (Jun 14 '14)edit

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answered Jun 5 '12

bruno.braga

836 ●13 ●21 ●39 http://brunobraga.net/

Another caveat is that nm-applet's tray icon is too big to the i3bar, so it shows a blank space (even though is there). I preferred wicd-client, which has more controls over the networking and the tray icon shows up correctly.

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This is a GTK bug which will be fixed in the next release. It used to work before the current release.

Michael (Jun 6 '12)edit

Seems to be corrected already, but not yet upstream.

bruno.braga (Jun 6 '12)edit

Just noticed that the icon for mobile broadband does not show up in Network Manager, not even with VERY BIG fonts, so I guess for that icon specifically there might be something more to it.

bruno.braga (Aug 3 '12)edit

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