[lug] NetworkManager (nm) survey from developers

Davide Del Vento davide.del.vento at gmail.com
Wed Mar 16 11:02:03 MDT 2016


Hi Mike,
Thanks for sending this out. This was good timing: I've got a new laptop
and I've been infuriated by some combined "bugs" (really, they are
misbehaviors) between openssl and nm-applet. I completed the survey (with
some "grumpiness factor" due to the above).

Now that everything is working, I'd like to report the issues as bugs, and
I was wondering where is the best place to do that. Google seems to think
each individual distro is the best, but I rather do that upstream (link
please). Example of the misbehaviors:

1) I am given a xxx.p12 file by my network admins, I run the following:

openssl pkcs12 -in xxx.p12 -nocerts -out privateKey.pem
openssl pkcs12 -in xxx.p12 -clcerts -nokeys -out publicCert.pem
openssl pkcs12 -in xxx.p12 -cacerts -nokeys -out mynetwork_cacert.pem

Note that openssl is extremely silly (I'll try to report bug to them too,
but I have no hopes on that side) and will happily do any or all of the
following:
- silently overwrite existing files
- create empty files (e.g. if import password is incorrect)
- silently create "somewhat broken" files (e.g. if PEM password is not
provided when creating a private key)

Now nm-applet, instead to trying to help the user to cope with that other
silly program, it starts a race on silliness, and tries to beat openssl at
it.

In fact, instead of reporting these problems with errors (heck, you asked
me to use an empty file? heck, this file is "broken" because of xxx?) it
just SILENTLY hide them in its file selection GUI, as if those files do not
exist. This is horrible design, frustrating to the experienced user (have I
mispelled the extension? maybe it's a cacert and I named it incorrectly?)
and infuriating for the newbie (am I in the wrong directory?). The file
selection should allow you to select a file, period. An error message
dialog should be raised after opening the file, and clearly stating WHAT
was wrong with the files. Silently not showing files which match the
displayed extension is utterly broken design and completely unacceptable
behavior to me (you can feel the frustration, can't you?)

I'd like to report this as a bug. Hopefully they will listen (since they
sent this survey out, they probably care about what their users think)

Thanks for your help with this,
Davide

On Sun, Mar 13, 2016 at 8:40 PM, Mike <mikedawg at gmail.com> wrote:

> So, I hope that list admin's stop me, if I shouldn't post this here. What
> I have is a survey from devs of NetworkManager (nm) who are looking for
> some community input into their product.
>
> My job often times does various surveys to get peoples reactions, or ideas
> about various products; and often times use these surveys to help improve
> products, or where to place various developers.
>
> If anyone is interested, there is a survey up now, on nm (NetworkManager)
> and if you want to include any details about what you're working on, it
> would be awesome.
>
> This survey can be found at: http://goo.gl/forms/UOxObT6iG3
>
> Let me know if you are interested in further surveys, or you prefer that I
> stop spamming this to the BLUG list.
>
> Thanks
>
> --
> MikeDawg
>
> _______________________________________________
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