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Yet again, I've found myself banging my head against the wall after having issues with wicd (the most consistenly buggy piece of widely-used software I've ever used).

This time, after installing wicd from apt-get on debian 8 jessie and then trying to open wicd-gtk, one of its gui front-ends, these, rather conradicting error-messages, pop up:

perry@perry:~$ wicd-gtk 
Has notifications support True
Loading...
Connecting to daemon...
Can't connect to the daemon, trying to start it automatically...
Can't connect to the daemon, trying to start it automatically...
It seems like the daemon is already running.
If it is not, please remove /var/run/wicd/wicd.pid and try again.
perry@perry:~$

wicd-gtk error

Also, when running just wicd, these message pops up:

perry@perry:~$ sudo wicd
It seems like the daemon is already running.
If it is not, please remove /var/run/wicd/wicd.pid and try again.

So obviously wicd-gtk can not find a daemon, however wicd seems to think it is up and running. I seem more keen to believe wicd-gtk error messages, seeing that there's no /etc/init.d/wicd file (which should be there to start and stop the daemon) and no output of a wicd process in ps aux | grep wicd.

What I've already tried: Re-installed wicd, removed all sorts of files rm -rf /etc/wicd /var/log/wicd /etc/dbus-1/system.d/wicd*, removed /var/run/wicd/wicd.pid, re-installed wicd.

My question is then, why isn't there a /etc/init.d/wicd file even though I installed wicd, and how am I suppose to get the daemon there?

Perry
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    According to the [file list](https://packages.debian.org/jessie/all/wicd-daemon/filelist) of the `wicd-daemon` package, it *does* include `/etc/init.d/wicd`, even in jessie. If you're missing that file, something seems very wrong. – Wieland May 16 '15 at 14:18
  • Would that mean that on installation apt-get is responsible for putting the file there? I definitely don't have the file there... – Perry May 16 '15 at 14:25
  • Apparently Debian 8 Jessie has the same `wicd` version as my Linux Mint 17.1 -- version 1.7.2.4-4. On my Mint, it's working fine. So there is no problem with the package. Just try clearing all the apt cache. Then reboot. Then try a re-install and make sure you install these three packages : `wicd`, `wicd-gtk` and `wicd-daemon`. No other package is required. – shivams May 18 '15 at 18:52
  • If everything else fails, how about you just compile from the source https://launchpad.net/wicd/+download ? – shivams May 18 '15 at 18:54
  • Do you got his file /etc/wicd/wired-settings.conf if so you should check for an empty line with `[]` remove that line if you got it – TheRealProcyon May 19 '15 at 12:15
  • @CedianO Don't seem to have that file either. – Perry May 19 '15 at 17:06
  • @Perry Any other name like that? – TheRealProcyon May 19 '15 at 17:06
  • @CedianO No, output of `ls -a /etc/wicd/`: `. .. encryption scripts` – Perry May 19 '15 at 17:12
  • Sorry to bother you then – TheRealProcyon May 19 '15 at 17:21

1 Answers1

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As is often the case in matters such as these, the ArchWiki is your go-to about detailed information: here (addage: those with the best documentation shall eventually carry the day)

Two, no three, items about network managers, the first being the only important one:

  1. Make sure only one is installed/active. If more than one is active your system will seem like a haunted house of random network connectivity. And they aren't named so that an unwitting person can detect them (e.g. connman, netctl, wicd, ...)

  2. If your experience is even two years into the past the changes associated with systemd will catch you unawares. For example, did you start and enable your wicd daemon?

  3. Many folks find Networkmanager (that's a specific network manager, not the generic name) to be more automatically serviceable for the more common situations.

Theophrastus
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  • Yep. The first advice is definitely very important. @Perry, make sure you have uninstalled any other network-manager. That might cause problems. E.g. `sudo apt-get remove network-manager-gnome` for gnome environment. – shivams May 18 '15 at 18:55
  • @shivams I've turned off and removed network-manager. Anyways, even if the network-manager would be turned on, the /etc/init.d/wicd file should still be there. – Perry May 18 '15 at 19:31
  • @Theoprhastus 1) Already done. 2) Obviously I've tried to enable my wicd daemon (/etc/init.d/wicd is the daemon for wicd), 3) Yes, no doubt it's more reliable, but seeing that wicd-curses is the only minimalistic network-manager out there and doesn't rely on a huge gui framework, I still prefer to stick with it, even though it indeed is very buggy and very crappy. – Perry May 18 '15 at 19:39
  • FWIW, NetworkManager itself has a curses-based text-mode user interface called `nmtui` since 2013 that doesn't need any GUI framework. It's included in the package `network-manager` in Debian. – Wieland May 24 '15 at 09:56