Description: KWirelessMonitor is a small KDE application that docks into the system tray and monitors the wireless network interface. It supports both Linux (tested on several major distributions) and FreeBSD (tested on 5.2.1). The systray icon shows the signal quality and the bit rate using a "bar graph" and a "pie chart", respectively. In the configuration dialog, you can change the bit rate and power management settings of the wireless interface. It is also able to automatically enable power management when using battery power and/or automatically disable power management during data transfer. By default, KWirelessMonitor tries to automatically detect the wireless interface. You can also manually set the interface name if necessary. Starting with version 0.5.91, KWirelessMonitor can connect to a network specified by the user (experimental). For more information, please check out the homepage.Last changelog:
0.5.91: # Experimental: Added support for connecting to a network specified by the user. User can enter the appropriate network name (ESSID) and click Ok/Apply to connect to the network. (Currently only supports unencrypted networks.)
Note: Tested on Fedora Core 2, Mandrake 10, and FreeBSD 5.2.1, which are supported by distribution-specific code. For other distributions, it falls back to generic code, which _theoretically_ should work. However, given the quirks I have encountered in the above three distributions, there are likely problems with other distributions as well. Please test this feature and report problems if it does not work.
0.5.4: # After settings are enabled, the previously saved settings are now immediately applied. # Added menu item for enabling settings.
0.5.2: # Changed manual power management setting UI: ``Enable'' and ``Disable'' are now push buttons.
0.5.0: # New user interface for power management settings: manual and automatic settings are now mutually exclusive.
0.4.8: # Available bit rates are now automatically detected, so now 802.11g bit rates can be selected. (Linux only.)
0.4.6: # Improved AC status detection with ACPI on Linux. # Improved quality calculation heuristics on Linux. (Hopefully this will support driverloader/ndiswrapper users who previously encountered "No signal" or similar problems.) # The status window is now sticky (i.e., appearing on all desktops) and without its own task bar entry.
0.4.4: # Added timeout heuristic for "automatically disable PM" to improve performance.
0.4.2: # FreeBSD support for "automatically disable power management during data transfer".
0.4.0: # Automatically disable power management during data transfer (Linux only).
Pre-0.4.0 features (both Linux and FreeBSD): # Automatically enable power management when using battery power. (Requires kernel ACPI or APM support on Linux; requires kernel APM support on FreeBSD.) # Truly transparent systray icons. # Allow changing bit rate and power management settings from the configuration dialog. kdesu is used to launch a helper process as root. # Display network name, signal quality, bit rate, and current power management mode in tooltip and status window. # Auto-detect the wireless interface. # Display signal quality and bit rate graphically.
When i execute kwirelessmonitor, it crash continuously... the debugging symbols i can get are these:
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
[New Thread 46912552024896 (LWP 2520)]
[New Thread 1082128736 (LWP 2524)]
0x00002aaaade82ff6 in select () from /lib/libc.so.6
#0 0x00002aaaade82ff6 in select () from /lib/libc.so.6
#1 0x00002aaaad36afab in _XWaitForReadable () from /usr/lib/libX11.so.6
#2 0x00002aaaad36b3ac in _XRead () from /usr/lib/libX11.so.6
#3 0x00002aaaad36c30d in _XReply () from /usr/lib/libX11.so.6
#4 0x00002aaaad36843e in XTranslateCoordinates () from /usr/lib/libX11.so.6
#5 0x00002aaaabdbe82f in QWidget::mapToGlobal ()
from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3
#6 0x00002aaaabf5f566 in QTipManager::showTip ()
from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3
#7 0x00002aaaabf5fe0a in QTipManager::qt_invoke ()
from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3
#8 0x00002aaaabe46ae8 in QObject::activate_signal ()
from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3
#9 0x00002aaaabe47252 in QObject::activate_signal ()
from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3
#10 0x00002aaaabe639d5 in QTimer::event () from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3
#11 0x00002aaaabdedfbd in QApplication::internalNotify ()
from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3
#12 0x00002aaaabdee340 in QApplication::notify ()
from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3
#13 0x00002aaaab162bb1 in KApplication::notify ()
from /usr/kde/3.4/lib64/libkdecore.so.4
#14 0x00002aaaabde303d in QEventLoop::activateTimers ()
from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3
#15 0x00002aaaabda424d in QEventLoop::processEvents ()
from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3
#16 0x00002aaaabe020c5 in QEventLoop::enterLoop ()
from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3
#17 0x00002aaaabe02022 in QEventLoop::exec ()
from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3
#18 0x0000000000412fd5 in QMap::operator[] ()
#19 0x00002aaaaddef7b8 in __libc_start_main () from /lib/libc.so.6
Does anyone have the same problem?
Thanks!!
Hi.. I'm using KDE 3.4, wireless-tools 27, and latest KWirelessMonitor.
iwconfig eth1 reports link-quality:
Link Quality=46/100
While KWirelessMonitor reports:
Signal 83%
Isn't this wrong? Or is link-quality and signal two different things?
There was an ebuild for an earlier version, but there isn't one for the current version...
The current version is a monitor that can also change the bit rate and power management settings. The next version (coming soon) will add the ability to connect to a specified network.
I've just released an experimental version that supports connecting to a network specified by the user. Please test this feature and let me know if it does not work. Thanks!
I generated this soft from source in mandrake 10.1 , but impossible to start it ! Is it necessary to indicate a special folder during generation, or later is there a special way to start it ?
I tried to lauch it in a user console, but the only effect was to loose other icons in the tray !
Can someone help ? thanks in advance ;)
I've just discovered that :
- installation path is /usr/local/kde/bin which must be appended to $PATH because of kwirelessmonitor-helper utility,
- when launching kwirelessmonitor there is an "invisible" icon put into the tray, and clicking with the mouse on it gives access to it's configuration. It's obvious that if the soft is started multiple times it will occupy the whole system tray, pushing other icons out of view... funny joke.
;)
When you build the application from source, have you tried the following?
./configure --prefix=<your_KDE_base>
This should put all the binaries and icons in the right place when you do "make install". That way, the application should be in your $PATH, and it should be able to find the icons correctly.
hello,
I found out that for Mandrake 10.1's applets the prefix should be here /usr in order to get the same kind of files at the same location.
Thanks. ;)
I'm using the lastest version of Kwirelessmonitor (built from source) on kde 3.2 Mandrake 10.1 My wireless card is the Intel Centrino 2100a using ndiswrapper .12 and Dell's latest Win XP drivers. It works fine except that it always says that the signal quality is 100% even when it's obviously not (like no signal at all). I'm not convinced that this is a problem with kwirelessmonitor but was wondering if anyone had an idea what this might be. Thanks.
It could be a problem with ndiswrapper. I remember some of the earlier comments were about ndiswrapper returning bogus values for quality or something like that. Have you tried the open source driver for the Intel 2100? It's already in stable status. Try here:
http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/
Hopefully it will work for you.
I only use the WiFi on my Laptop once and a while basicly well i'm @ class and then only at times.
Would it be possable to add some right clcike options to Start, Stop, and maybe Restart the Wifi device?. I currently habe them in my K menu but i think having them as a right click on your plugin would be much better.
Sorry for the late reply. I plan to implement the capability to connect to different networks, so it will probably have something similar to what you want. Thanks for the suggestion!
Yes, of course. In early May, when someone told me about kwifimanager, I sent an e-mail to the kwifimanager developer asking about how I can contribute to the kwifimanager application. Since I haven't heard anything from him, I guess he is probably not interested. By the way, from what I heard, the KiFi (another similar application) developers had similar experiences communicating with him, so I guess it's not just me.
Well my (I work on KiFi) experience were a little worse than not hearing from him, I'll just leave it at that. Anyway, it's funny how KiFi is sort of complimentary to KWirelessMonitor, it does scanning and network switching, while KWirelessMonitor does all the other wireless-related stuff.
Hi,
I am the KWiFiManager developer. I found this thread only accidentally while googling for something else...
I'm somewhat surprised to hear of both of you and don't remember anything in May this year. And also nothing about KiFi...
I had a busy time in the last half year but tried to answer every mail I got about KWiFiManager but maybe I missed something important, so I'll say a big SORRY if I stepped on someone's feet.
Could both of you contact me by private mail? I'll give you a 48-hour response guarantee this time :-)
Stefan Winter
Thanks a lot for this great tool! I just love it but (there's always a but), you should consider a better icon set. This one is not so beautiful. Maybe have a look to Crystal.
Thanks for the feedback. Are you referring to the icons in the configuration dialog or the systray icons? For the configuration dialog, I just use the system default icons for "Settings", etc., so the icons displayed depend on the distribution. For the systray icons, I browsed the Crystal SVG icons but didn't find anything suitable for this purpose. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
That is certainly a good feature. However, I think it probably makes more sense to support that after the support for changing ESSID is implemented (since otherwise you will have to use another tool to change the ESSID anyway). If you think "read-only" is acceptable, I will consider implementing it first.
I think this program is great. My wireless occasionally disconnects, and I can keep a close eye on it with this program. How hard would it be to have this program automatically run a script when the network disconnects? I have a simple one (a few iwconfig commands and an ifup wlan0) that I need to run whenever I get disconnected, but if this program could do it, that would be a great feature.
Ratings & Comments
117 Comments
When i execute kwirelessmonitor, it crash continuously... the debugging symbols i can get are these: [Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled] [New Thread 46912552024896 (LWP 2520)] [New Thread 1082128736 (LWP 2524)] 0x00002aaaade82ff6 in select () from /lib/libc.so.6 #0 0x00002aaaade82ff6 in select () from /lib/libc.so.6 #1 0x00002aaaad36afab in _XWaitForReadable () from /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 #2 0x00002aaaad36b3ac in _XRead () from /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 #3 0x00002aaaad36c30d in _XReply () from /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 #4 0x00002aaaad36843e in XTranslateCoordinates () from /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 #5 0x00002aaaabdbe82f in QWidget::mapToGlobal () from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3 #6 0x00002aaaabf5f566 in QTipManager::showTip () from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3 #7 0x00002aaaabf5fe0a in QTipManager::qt_invoke () from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3 #8 0x00002aaaabe46ae8 in QObject::activate_signal () from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3 #9 0x00002aaaabe47252 in QObject::activate_signal () from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3 #10 0x00002aaaabe639d5 in QTimer::event () from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3 #11 0x00002aaaabdedfbd in QApplication::internalNotify () from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3 #12 0x00002aaaabdee340 in QApplication::notify () from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3 #13 0x00002aaaab162bb1 in KApplication::notify () from /usr/kde/3.4/lib64/libkdecore.so.4 #14 0x00002aaaabde303d in QEventLoop::activateTimers () from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3 #15 0x00002aaaabda424d in QEventLoop::processEvents () from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3 #16 0x00002aaaabe020c5 in QEventLoop::enterLoop () from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3 #17 0x00002aaaabe02022 in QEventLoop::exec () from /usr/qt/3/lib64/libqt-mt.so.3 #18 0x0000000000412fd5 in QMap::operator[] () #19 0x00002aaaaddef7b8 in __libc_start_main () from /lib/libc.so.6 Does anyone have the same problem? Thanks!!
...same here on kde 3.4.2 (Kubuntu) :(
Hi.. I'm using KDE 3.4, wireless-tools 27, and latest KWirelessMonitor. iwconfig eth1 reports link-quality: Link Quality=46/100 While KWirelessMonitor reports: Signal 83% Isn't this wrong? Or is link-quality and signal two different things?
Hi... is there an ebuild available for this one ? by the way, is this only a monitor, or it actually can connect to network and get an IP ?
There was an ebuild for an earlier version, but there isn't one for the current version... The current version is a monitor that can also change the bit rate and power management settings. The next version (coming soon) will add the ability to connect to a specified network.
k, I'll be waiting for it
I've just released an experimental version that supports connecting to a network specified by the user. Please test this feature and let me know if it does not work. Thanks!
I generated this soft from source in mandrake 10.1 , but impossible to start it ! Is it necessary to indicate a special folder during generation, or later is there a special way to start it ? I tried to lauch it in a user console, but the only effect was to loose other icons in the tray ! Can someone help ? thanks in advance ;)
I've just discovered that : - installation path is /usr/local/kde/bin which must be appended to $PATH because of kwirelessmonitor-helper utility, - when launching kwirelessmonitor there is an "invisible" icon put into the tray, and clicking with the mouse on it gives access to it's configuration. It's obvious that if the soft is started multiple times it will occupy the whole system tray, pushing other icons out of view... funny joke. ;)
When you build the application from source, have you tried the following? ./configure --prefix=<your_KDE_base> This should put all the binaries and icons in the right place when you do "make install". That way, the application should be in your $PATH, and it should be able to find the icons correctly.
hello, I found out that for Mandrake 10.1's applets the prefix should be here /usr in order to get the same kind of files at the same location. Thanks. ;)
I'm using the lastest version of Kwirelessmonitor (built from source) on kde 3.2 Mandrake 10.1 My wireless card is the Intel Centrino 2100a using ndiswrapper .12 and Dell's latest Win XP drivers. It works fine except that it always says that the signal quality is 100% even when it's obviously not (like no signal at all). I'm not convinced that this is a problem with kwirelessmonitor but was wondering if anyone had an idea what this might be. Thanks.
It could be a problem with ndiswrapper. I remember some of the earlier comments were about ndiswrapper returning bogus values for quality or something like that. Have you tried the open source driver for the Intel 2100? It's already in stable status. Try here: http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/ Hopefully it will work for you.
I've made a debian package for kwirelessmonitor. Anyone interested?
I only use the WiFi on my Laptop once and a while basicly well i'm @ class and then only at times. Would it be possable to add some right clcike options to Start, Stop, and maybe Restart the Wifi device?. I currently habe them in my K menu but i think having them as a right click on your plugin would be much better.
Sorry for the late reply. I plan to implement the capability to connect to different networks, so it will probably have something similar to what you want. Thanks for the suggestion!
Have you considered working on kwifimanager rather than duplicating it? It could really do with someone working on it.
Yes, of course. In early May, when someone told me about kwifimanager, I sent an e-mail to the kwifimanager developer asking about how I can contribute to the kwifimanager application. Since I haven't heard anything from him, I guess he is probably not interested. By the way, from what I heard, the KiFi (another similar application) developers had similar experiences communicating with him, so I guess it's not just me.
Well my (I work on KiFi) experience were a little worse than not hearing from him, I'll just leave it at that. Anyway, it's funny how KiFi is sort of complimentary to KWirelessMonitor, it does scanning and network switching, while KWirelessMonitor does all the other wireless-related stuff.
Hi, I am the KWiFiManager developer. I found this thread only accidentally while googling for something else... I'm somewhat surprised to hear of both of you and don't remember anything in May this year. And also nothing about KiFi... I had a busy time in the last half year but tried to answer every mail I got about KWiFiManager but maybe I missed something important, so I'll say a big SORRY if I stepped on someone's feet. Could both of you contact me by private mail? I'll give you a 48-hour response guarantee this time :-) Stefan Winter
Thanks a lot for this great tool! I just love it but (there's always a but), you should consider a better icon set. This one is not so beautiful. Maybe have a look to Crystal.
Thanks for the feedback. Are you referring to the icons in the configuration dialog or the systray icons? For the configuration dialog, I just use the system default icons for "Settings", etc., so the icons displayed depend on the distribution. For the systray icons, I browsed the Crystal SVG icons but didn't find anything suitable for this purpose. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
It would be nice if this application could show all ESSIDs in range (as does stock Windows XP, btw)
That is certainly a good feature. However, I think it probably makes more sense to support that after the support for changing ESSID is implemented (since otherwise you will have to use another tool to change the ESSID anyway). If you think "read-only" is acceptable, I will consider implementing it first.
I think this program is great. My wireless occasionally disconnects, and I can keep a close eye on it with this program. How hard would it be to have this program automatically run a script when the network disconnects? I have a simple one (a few iwconfig commands and an ifup wlan0) that I need to run whenever I get disconnected, but if this program could do it, that would be a great feature.