KWirelessMonitor 0.5.91 review

KWirelessMonitor is a small KDE application that docks into the system tray and monitors the wireless network interface

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: KWirelessMonitor Team

0

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).

I wrote this because I like the compactness of the Wavelan/Orinoco monitor in Windows. The KWirelessMonitor systray icon shows the signal quality and the bit rate using a "bar graph" and a "pie chart", respectively.

The tool tip also displays the network name (ESSID) and the power management mode. 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, it tries to automatically detect the wireless interface.

You can also manually set the interface name if necessary. Experimental: Starting with version 0.5.91, KWirelessMonitor can connect to a network specified by the user (currently only supports unencrypted networks).

Installation:

If you want to install from source, you can do the following in the top level directory (kwirelessmonitor-x.y.z):

./configure --prefix=
make
make install

A few notes:

1. < your_KDE_base > is the base directory in which KDE is installed (/usr for Red Hat/Fedora, /opt/kde3 for SUSE, or try the output of "kde-config --prefix"). This must be set correctly (otherwise the application will not be able to find the icons).
2. If the application builds successfully but it always says "No signal", it is quite possible that your glibc kernel headers and your running kernel are of different versions. You can check this by comparing /usr/include/linux/wireless.h and < your_kernel_source_dir >/include/linux/wireless.h.
3. On FreeBSD 5.2.1, it seems that the following is necessary:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-extra-includes=/usr/local/include
--with-extra-libs=/usr/local/lib

Usage:

To start KWirelessMonitor, simply run the application, and it will dock into the system tray. By default, the application tries to automatically detect the wireless interface. If there are multiple wireless interfaces, the first one is selected. If necessary, you can manually set the wireless interface name by right click on the icon and select "Configure..." (see the screenshot above).

In the configuration dialog, the first time you switch to the "Settings" page, kdesu will ask for the root password, which is necessary for changing the bit rate and power management settings of the wireless interface. If you click "Ignore" or "Cancel", you will not be able to change the settings.

After the settings are enabled, the previously saved settings are immediately applied. Enabling settings and applying the previously saved settings can also be achieved by selecting "Enable Settings..." in the right-click menu. Mouse over the icon to see the tool tip, and left click on the icon to bring up the small status window (left click again to hide it).

What's New in This Release:
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.