wicd + dhclient + dnsmasq

[ruebenramirez]

sudo apt-get install wicd wicd-curses

common wicd problems:

• wicd keeps dropping and reconnecting:
  • I had this problem only when I had both the Always switch to wired connection when available and Always show wired interface boxes checked. When I disabled both of these options, the constant drop and reconnect problem went away
• wicd connects, but I don't have any DNS settings?!
  • in /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf uncomment line 28 so that it reads require subnet-mask, domain-name-servers;. When wicd connects to your network, dhclient will now require DNS server information and writes that info into resolv.conf (however you have that setup)

dnsmasq runs off of /run/dnsmasq/resolv.conf for it's upstream DNS servers (any DNS queries it doesn't have an answer for will forward here and beyond)

[ruebenramirez]

after installing wicd, you'll want to disable NetworkManager from launching with system boot (if you don't just remove it from your machine altogether)

in /etc/init/network-manager.conf comment out lines 8 - 10 so that they look like this:

# start on (local-filesystems
#     and started dbus
#     and static-network-up)

Now we just need to kill the current running instance of network-manager service with: sudo stop network-manager

now wicd wont fight with network-manager over who controls the wifi cards.

[ruebenramirez]

by deleting the wired interface name from the "Prefs" menu, it appears that the wired network is no longer configured as the preferred default.