WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

pivotraze · 2013-02-03 05:40:38

A Big hurdle has just been passed.

WiFiz now detects all wireless networks around you, and adds them all to the list.

It also will now show Connection strength in percentages. Oddly, all show up as the same percentage, but that is because all show up in iwlist as the same fraction (idk why. Interesting bug maybe? Or is that accurate?)

Now to work on the actual bulk of the work: Integration with netctl.

EDIT:

It now correctly identifies which network (if any) you are connected to:

Last edited by pivotraze (2013-02-03 22:45:20)

HalosGhost · 2013-02-03 09:32:39

Fantastic progress! Sounds like the first release should be coming up soon.

All the best,

-HG

pivotraze · 2013-02-03 09:39:51

HUGE Update:

It is able to connect and disconnect from profiles. When connecting, it will automatically make a new profile, labeled "wifiz-" and then the network name. It currently works for sure with wep.

I have yet to test it on WPA, or open. I don't see why it would not work, but it will be tested sometime tomorrow. It can only disconnect from networks labeled "wifiz-(networkname)" as of right now, but hopefully I will be able to work my way around that later.

During that process, I learned that netctl automatically takes the adapter down when you disconnect, and you can not scan for networks. I have worked around that. There are currently no bugs I know of, and it's open for very tentative testing. You will have to clone the git at: https://github.com/codywd/WiFiz to use it.

netCTL will remove any conflicts (netCFG, WICD, NetworkManager, and maybe others I don't quite know about)

WiFiz depends on Python 2.7, and wxPython 2.8... and of course netCTL.

Oh, and no ethernet as of yet. That will come later.

Last edited by pivotraze (2013-02-03 09:41:10)

pivotraze · 2013-02-03 18:06:03

If anybody has an idea why the WiFiz icon in the bottom taskbar turns out to look like such... well... crap, please let me know.

iconFile = "./logo.png"
mainIcon = wx.Icon(iconFile, wx.BITMAP_TYPE_PNG)
self.SetIcon(mainIcon)
tbicon = wx.TaskBarIcon()
tbicon.SetIcon(mainIcon, "WiFiz")

The code for it, and the background is transparent.

EDIT:
TaskbarIcon now pops up menu that lists all profiles.

You can now connect to any profile it finds by clicking it. It will stop all running profiles, and then start the one you chose. This will find ones made by WiFiz and ones that are not.

Last edited by pivotraze (2013-02-03 22:46:21)

MrCode · 2013-02-03 22:42:34

Just a quick OT comment:

While it's nice to share screenshots, it would be nice if you could keep them within the size/dimension limits specified in the Forum Etiquette, i.e. <= 250px in either dimension and/or <= 50 KiB in filesize. You could just link the images, or post thumbnails which link to the full-size images.

I imagine a mod will notice these eventually…

Last edited by MrCode (2013-02-03 22:43:33)

pivotraze · 2013-02-03 22:46:55

MrCode wrote:

Just a quick OT comment:
While it's nice to share screenshots, it would be nice if you could keep them within the size/dimension limits specified in the Forum Etiquette, i.e. <= 250px in either dimension and/or <= 50 KiB in filesize. You could just link the images, or post thumbnails which link to the full-size images.
I imagine a mod will notice these eventually…

I'm sorry, I didn't know about that rule I'm fixing now. Thanks for letting me know about it. Won't happen again

RANDOM EDIT: After WiFiz goes gold, I'm taking time off (apart from bug fixes) to just work on learning Ruby. It seems interesting. I goofed off a bit today and was intrigued (the "end" to end functions is annoying), and want to learn more than one language to have more robust knowledge. It isn't crazy different... yet.

Last edited by pivotraze (2013-02-05 06:52:26)

pivotraze · 2013-02-07 06:21:13

I have dropped a few features from the list to decrease bloat. I want to keep this app very focused on one thing: Connecting to networks via netctl. I don't want it to be a all-around app for netCTL, that's not the point of it.

If enough people want any of the following dropped features, I will re-add them.
1. Automatic connection to created profiles (if WiFiz is running, and network is in range)
2. Simple editing of current profiles - A separate app for this is being planned.
3. Automatically connect to open/unsecured networks - Potential Security issue

Since these are being dropped, I can also almost push it into a Release Candidate Status. I only have to implement "New Profile", and then it will be done. Release candidates will be 0.9 - 0.99. That does not mean there will be 9 release candidates, just that I can have up to 9 release candidates (I will likely never use x.xxx, at most x.xx)

Git is updated. Still must be cloned, as I am not entirely sure how to make a PKGBuild yet. I am looking into it.

Last edited by pivotraze (2013-02-07 06:24:46)

progandy · 2013-02-07 13:59:26

pivotraze wrote:

1. Automatic connection to created profiles (if WiFiz is running, and network is in range)

Nice to have if you can disable it for specific profiles. semi-automatic would be nice too (button "Scan and connect")

2. Simple editing of current profiles - A separate app for this is being planned.

Just add a menu item and let the user select one of two options: your app if available or a custom text editor

3. Automatically connect to open/unsecured networks - Potential Security issue

Do that only for when a profile for that network exists (wired: any dhcp profile, wireless: Profile for SSID). A notification which mentions the insecure connection would be nice, too.

PS: You could put autoconnect in a daemon and use "netctl current" to update your GUI. This allows the GUI to reflect manual changes done in a shell, too. Autoconnect profiles would contain another variable to mark them like "AUTOCONNECT=yes"

Edit: Instead of iwlist and other external tools you could consider PythonWifi. THat would also allow you to display the current signal level in the tray icon.

Last edited by progandy (2013-02-07 14:38:52)

pivotraze · 2013-02-07 18:07:18

progandy wrote:

pivotraze wrote:
1. Automatic connection to created profiles (if WiFiz is running, and network is in range)
Nice to have if you can disable it for specific profiles. semi-automatic would be nice too (button "Scan and connect")

I was originally planning to have it where you could set a main preferred, and then if that can't be connected to, it goes down a list. I didn't really think about specific profiles... Hmm... Lol

2. Simple editing of current profiles - A separate app for this is being planned.
Just add a menu item and let the user select one of two options: your app if available or a custom text editor

Again, I may have been going about it a confusing way. I was trying to get it to allow editing where there were multiple text boxes and it pulled each from the specific profile. It probably would be easier to just open it up in a text control...

3. Automatically connect to open/unsecured networks - Potential Security issue
Do that only for when a profile for that network exists (wired: any dhcp profile, wireless: Profile for SSID). A notification which mentions the insecure connection would be nice, too.

That actually is a much better idea. I was thinking like, at McDonald's for instance, you have the attwifi unsecured networks, and having it auto-connect to those. But that would have it tie into the first thing removed. That may cut down on a lot of coding.

PS: You could put autoconnect in a daemon and use "netctl current" to update your GUI. This allows the GUI to reflect manual changes done in a shell, too. Autoconnect profiles would contain another variable to mark them like "AUTOCONNECT=yes"

I have never written a daemon, so I'm not quite sure how to go about it, and netctl doesn't have a command for "current"?

Edit: Instead of iwlist and other external tools you could consider PythonWifi. THat would also allow you to display the current signal level in the tray icon.

That would have been very nice to know about before I started this app. I am looking into it now haha.

The only problem with PythonWifi is that it is for python2.5: python_wifi-0.5.0-py2.5.egg (md5)
I use Python 2.7 :\ It didn't install correctly, as I can't import it.

Last edited by pivotraze (2013-02-07 18:48:05)

progandy · 2013-02-07 19:37:10

I was originally planning to have it where you could set a main preferred, and then if that can't be connected to, it goes down a list. I didn't really think about specific profiles... Hmm... Lol

I like your idea even better. If you have a list of autoconnect profiles (profiles not on list will not be connected) with a preference order, then it is perfect

I have never written a daemon, so I'm not quite sure how to go about it,

This should help: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Joh … le_Daemons
Write that profile list into a text file ordered by priority, the daemon reads it (reload config on SIGHUP: "systemctl reload wifiz-auto.service") and waits for the wlan interface to go down. Then it brings it up, scans every few seconds for a signal and compares the ESSID to the ones in the profiles. If it finds it, connect to it and wait for the interface to go down. Edit: I don't know what netctl does exactly when the connection is lost, so that may pose a problem.

and netctl doesn't have a command for "current"?

Sorry, that was netcfg. netctl has a star in front of active profiles when using "list" (set using systemctl is-active)

Last edited by progandy (2013-02-07 19:48:17)

SomeoneE1se · 2013-03-21 22:39:59

My 2¢: A gui that sits in the tray that manages wifi NEEDS to auto to connect to wifi networks that are enabled for auto connect!

Another nice feature is one that aggressively attempts to maintain a connection (including connecting to unknown and open networks) But I doubt that this is feature that belongs in this app.

Installing now.

Last edited by SomeoneE1se (2013-03-21 22:40:52)

SomeoneE1se · 2013-03-22 05:34:49

I've submitted a pull request to you on github. Nothing major just some quick stuff as I was looking through your code.

I'll have some more ready later. In the mean time if you have any issues, bugs, features you're looking into I'm happy to help.

pivotraze · 2013-03-24 05:04:18

SomeoneE1se wrote:

I've submitted a pull request to you on github. Nothing major just some quick stuff as I was looking through your code.
I'll have some more ready later. In the mean time if you have any issues, bugs, features you're looking into I'm happy to help.

Thanks very much for the code I'm currently reinstalling Arch as some crazy stuff happened with it and Gnome 3, where I couldn't click anything. So I just decided to reinstall for simplicity (and I like doing it as I always feel I learn something new each time.)

More commits from me will be coming soon as well.

gehidore · 2013-04-05 07:18:27

How's the progress?

Last edited by gehidore (2013-04-05 07:22:12)

SomeoneE1se · 2013-04-05 07:26:27

gehidore wrote:

How's the progress? I'm kind of surprised to not see an aur package yet

No aur for the moment, not never just not yet. It's currently unstable (ie not everything is working as it should be). But one should be coming soon (end of this month maybe? Sooner if it sees more interest!). Once we get a version with everything at least functioning as it should we'll create a aur package and update this thread.

If you want to just play with it now, you can clone the master branch from github. It just saw a major upgrade and while network creation isn't supported to 100% the tray is working "perfectly" with any kind of existing network.

It would also be super awesome if you could test it out and report ANY bugs, even feature requests. (here or on github) If you need more help post here and I'll create a better readme for the git repo that explains everything!

Last edited by SomeoneE1se (2013-04-05 07:27:19)

gehidore · 2013-04-08 17:11:50

SomeoneE1se wrote:

It would also be super awesome if you could test it out and report ANY bugs, even feature requests. (here or on github) If you need more help post here and I'll create a better readme for the git repo that explains everything!

I'll do exactly that.

SomeoneE1se · 2013-04-11 05:21:42

New update to the github repo. Cleaned up a lot of the code and features. By the end of the month we should be able to release an AUR package.

https://github.com/GrayHatter/WiFiz/tree/v0.9

Last edited by SomeoneE1se (2013-04-11 05:23:01)

nuc · 2013-04-29 00:41:01

SomeoneE1se wrote:

New update to the github repo. Cleaned up a lot of the code and features. By the end of the month we should be able to release an AUR package.
https://github.com/GrayHatter/WiFiz/tree/v0.9

It's the end of the month now, no new commit so far it seems. Is there any progress?

Last edited by nuc (2013-04-29 00:41:38)

gehidore · 2013-04-29 01:18:54

nuc wrote:

SomeoneE1se wrote:
New update to the github repo. Cleaned up a lot of the code and features. By the end of the month we should be able to release an AUR package.
https://github.com/GrayHatter/WiFiz/tree/v0.9
It's the end of the month now, no new commit so far it seems. Is there any progress?

They still got 2 days

SomeoneE1se · 2013-04-29 18:12:19

Sorry guy's I've gotten distracted by other things. I'll get an aur package created and released by tomorrow night; but I'll be a RC and not v1.0

SomeoneE1se · 2013-04-30 05:35:57

So, I'm sorry to say that WiFiz won't be available on the AUR before May. I will however release a "working" PKGBUILD here within 36hours, for anyone who's willing to give it a test run for us. (the package will be working, just not ready for AUR, just incase)

gehidore · 2013-04-30 06:55:28

SomeoneE1se wrote:

I will however release a "working" PKGBUILD here within 36hours, for anyone who's willing to give it a test run for us. (the package will be working, just not ready for AUR, just incase)

I'm game.

SomeoneE1se · 2013-05-01 06:18:27

I'm battling with the python way of installing code. I've got a working version of wifiz, and a working package build. However when I add the two together it no worky.

I'm happy to post the PKGBUILD here if you really want to give it a try. But it has a few hacks to make it work that I'm sure will break someone's system. Not to mention it doesn't really work.

In the meantime, you can still clone the git and run it directly from the repo with "./main.py" I'll try to get it working as soon as I can.

Sorry!

gehidore · 2013-05-01 06:57:46

SomeoneE1se wrote:

In the meantime, you can still clone the git and run it directly from the repo with "./main.py" I'll try to get it working as soon as I can.
Sorry!

No worries, I'll stick with that for now...

SomeoneE1se · 2013-05-01 19:06:22

Screw the python way, the arch way is SO much better.

currently unstable (I broke something) but I should have it working by tonight. AUR pkg coming soon.

Here's a working PKGBUILD for your pacman installing pleasure!

# Maintainer: Gregory Mullen <greg@grayhatter.com>

pkgname=wifiz-git
_gitname=wifiz-nightly
pkgver=v0.9.24.gd41228d
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="GUI for netctl, nightly version."
arch=('any')
url="https://github.com/GrayHatter/WiFiz"
license=('unknown')
depends=('python2' 'wxpython' 'wireless_tools' 'netctl')
makedepends=('git')
provides=('wifiz')
conflicts=('wifiz')
options=(!emptydirs)
source=('wifiz-nightly::git://github.com/GrayHatter/WiFiz.git#branch=nightly')
md5sums=('SKIP')

pkgver() {
  cd $srcdir/wifiz-nightly
  # Use the tag of the last commit
  git describe --always | sed 's|-|.|g'
}

package() {
  cd $srcdir/$_gitname
  pwd
  python2 setup.py install --root="$pkgdir/" --optimize=1
}

Arch Linux

#26 2013-02-03 05:40:38

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#27 2013-02-03 09:32:39

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#28 2013-02-03 09:39:51

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#29 2013-02-03 18:06:03

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#30 2013-02-03 22:42:34

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#31 2013-02-03 22:46:55

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#32 2013-02-07 06:21:13

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#33 2013-02-07 13:59:26

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#34 2013-02-07 18:07:18

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#35 2013-02-07 19:37:10

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#36 2013-03-21 22:39:59

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#37 2013-03-22 05:34:49

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#38 2013-03-24 05:04:18

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#39 2013-04-05 07:18:27

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#40 2013-04-05 07:26:27

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#41 2013-04-08 17:11:50

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#42 2013-04-11 05:21:42

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#43 2013-04-29 00:41:01

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#44 2013-04-29 01:18:54

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#45 2013-04-29 18:12:19

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#46 2013-04-30 05:35:57

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#47 2013-04-30 06:55:28

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#48 2013-05-01 06:18:27

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#49 2013-05-01 06:57:46

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

#50 2013-05-01 19:06:22

Re: WiFiz - A NetCTL GUI Frontend - Under Development (AUR!)

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