migrate to NetworkManager 0.9

[sascha_silbe]

I was perfectly sure I had already filed this as a Trac ticket, with quite some elaboration - but cannot find it anywhere. :-/

For storing network connection information we should use  system settings by default, not  user settings. Currently we don't support the former at all (whereas the Gnome UI allows the user to tick a checkbox during configuration to choose between the two).

Using system settings allows NetworkManager to connect to the network indepently of any user being logged in. Some of the benefits:

1. Ability to ssh into a machine where Sugar is broken (=> no network at all with the current "user settings" strategy).
2. No connection loss on restart of Sugar.
3. Automated tools (e.g. NTP, IPv6 tunnel) might get a network connection during boot.
4. Faster collaboration startup.
5. Bugs in our implementation of the user settings won't hit the majority of users. ;)

I consider it not to be a security issue due to the (assumed) distribution of use cases:

1. Most computers (laptops and desktops) that run Sugar are single-user; everyone who can (physically) log in to the machine is going to be trusted to use any configured network connection (though not read the password - but given the way the  NetworkManager D-Bus API is structured that shouldn't be an issue)
2. Most multi-user machines will handle the network connection as part of the system setup and not run NetworkManager resp. not allow users to fiddle with the network connection at all. This especially includes LTSP-style setups.
3. The remaining fraction of systems is rather likely to have experienced system administrators willing and able to lock down the system on their own, including modifying D-Bus / PolicyKit configs to fit their needs.

Disadvantages:
1. Requires D-Bus or PolicyKit configuration to allow the Sugar user to access NetworkManager system settings. OTOH we already require D-Bus configuration to allow the Sugar user to access NetworkManager user settings.

[sascha_silbe]

Upstream is  going to remove user settings. The new API for the system settings (with "ACL" support) hasn't been decided on yet.

[quozl]

Recent thread on OLPC-AU includes  discovery that a settings stored in GNOME can be used by Sugar.

[sascha_silbe]

The  first beta of NM 0.9 has been released. The full list of  API changes and a  migration guide are available.

As part of the 0.9 migration I'd like us to show configured connections in addition to the currently visible access points. This should help users working in less-than-perfect environments (disabled beacons, VPNs, access points on different sites that need different credentials but have the same SSID, etc.).

For the reasons outlined in the original description above, Sugar isn't going to support configuring non-empty  ACLs and won't provide a  Secret Agent. Additional software (e.g. nm-applet) can be used for complicated multi-user set-ups.

[dsd]

Fixed in sugar-0.95.2