I dont mind those backends, just look at that:

-ntrack doesnt work reliably
-networkmanager doesnt work reliably
-if you disable both, solid defaults to offline.
-there are many (as in tens of millions) users with a permanent connection to the internet

To me, that's a good reason to change something. Even if it's just defaulting to "online" when detection is turned off.

Update: I tried the modified DBUS call, it appears to have the same effect
2nd update: for clarification: when talking about init scripts, I've been talking about the net.* init scripts, not the networkmanager init script. My box has two interfaces that can be up or down individually, and different services run on both. I can do this fine with openrc, networkmanager is two steps backwards for me as it only knows "online" (all up) and "offline" (all down) and has no idea about starting/stopping services.

3rd update: wait aminute. Did you say I can just install networkmanager, but dont have to actually run it to get solid to work properly?
4th update: tried running NetworkManager with default conf. Interfaces come up, nm-online says "0" (online), but solid still says "0" (offline). Test run after solid rebuilt with Networkmanager support, a full reboot and a fresh login.

Did this build contain NTrack and NetworkManager or just NetworkManager support? If it contained just NetworkManager, and you logged out and back in, then I would advise checking the D-Bus security permissions to ensure KDE is allowed to communicate with NetworkManager.

Thanks for all the help so far. Still haven't found anything that looks wrong.

Networkmanager policy /etc/dbus-1/system.d/NetworkManager.conf:

Code: Select all

<!DOCTYPE busconfig PUBLIC
 "-//freedesktop//DTD D-BUS Bus Configuration 1.0//EN"
 "http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/dbus/1.0/busconfig.dtd">
<busconfig>
        <policy user="root">
                <allow own="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>
                <allow own="org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerSystemSettings"/>

                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>
                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerSystemSettings"/>

                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.PPP"/>
        </policy>
        <policy at_console="true">
                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>

                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.DBus.Introspectable"/>

                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties"/>

                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>

                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.AccessPoint"/>

                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.Connection.Active"/>

                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.Device.Cdma"/>

                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.Device.Wired"/>

                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.Device.Gsm"/>

                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.Device.Serial"/>

                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.Device.Wireless"/>

                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.Device"/>

                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.DHCP4Config"/>

                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.IP4Config"/>

                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.VPN.Connection"/>

                <deny send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_member="SetLogging"/>

                <deny send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_member="Sleep"/>

                <deny send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_member="sleep"/>

                <deny send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_member="wake"/>
        </policy>
        <policy context="default">
                <deny own="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>
                <deny own="org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerSystemSettings"/>

                <deny send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>
                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerSystemSettings"/>

                <deny send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_member="SetLogging"/>

                <deny send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_member="Sleep"/>

                <deny send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_member="sleep"/>

                <deny send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
                       send_member="wake"/>

                <!-- The org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerSettings.Connection.Secrets
                     interface is secured via PolicyKit.
                  -->
        </policy>

        <limit name="max_replies_per_connection">512</limit>
</busconfig>

There are several KDE policies, but none look related.

That looks ok... if you try using qdbusviewer, are you able to retrieve information from NetworkManager over D-Bus?

I can with d-feet or qdbus, I guess that counts as well? (Update: yes qdbusviewer works) Btw,

qdbus org.kde.kded /modules/networkstatus org.kde.Solid.Networking.networks

returns an empty set.

This explains why you cannot get the state to shift from 0 even after running the qdbus command.
Do you have NetworkManager support built into the NetworkStatus backend (which is part of kde-runtime)?

In any case, try running this workaround (will work until you logout of the KDE desktop, may cause instability of kded4):

Code: Select all

qdbus org.kde.kded /modules/networkstatus registerNetwork "SolidNetwork" 4 "org.kde.kded"

Yes, networkmanager support is compiled in.
The workaround finally makes kded report network status 4, however, akonadi mail resources still randomly switch offline -___- WTH is going on here.

P.S. I'm migrating to Qt 4.8.1 right now. Not sure whether that makes a difference, but well, maybe it does.

It didn't. I tried to switch one of the random offliners back online manually using dbus, which did nothing on the first try. When I tried again later it crashed the whole resource, and after a restart all its configuration was gone. A strange thing: when I reconfigured it, after the next boot it would happen to a different resource (different mail account), but it got the same resource name (IMAP 15). I start to feel like an alien is manipulating my machine and laughing its **** off. Only way to fix this behavior was deleting the bogus resource 15 and creating a new one.