NetworkManager

From ArchWiki

Network Manager is a set of co-operative tools that make networking simple and straightforward. Whether wireless or wired, Network Manager allows you to quickly move from one network to another: once a network has been configured and joined once, it can be detected and re-joined automatically at a later date.

Network Manager 0.7 is a major overhaul of the NetworkManager program.

Some of the new features include:

• Support for cellular data cards
• Multiple Active Devices
• System-wide Configuration
• wpa_supplicant dbus Control Interface
• More Wireless/Wired Authentication Methods

Step 1: Installation

NetworkManager is available in the repositories:

# pacman -S networkmanager

Step 2: GUIs

Install a GUI to have a applet in the system's tray or notification area, so you can select a network to connect, it will promot to type in the AP's password, quite easy and handy.

Gnome

network-manager-applet (formerly gnome-network-manager) is also there:

# pacman -S network-manager-applet

If no icon for nm-applet appears on one of your panels in Gnome, yet you are sure it is running, try adding a "Notification Area" to a panel.

KDE

KDE4

KNetworkManager is available in the extra repository. Install it like so:

# pacman -S kdeplasma-applets-networkmanagement

If you get the following message from the knetworkmanager:

 Network Management disabled

just ignore it at continue with Configuration.

KDE3

You can try to use knetworkmanager which is no longer maintained in any Arch official repositories. You can get it from the AUR.

Xfce

Xfce uses the same package as GNOME:

# pacman -S network-manager-applet 

You can also install xfapplet plugin, which allows GNOME applets to be displayed within the xfce4 panel:

# pacman -S xfce4-xfapplet-plugin

If after installation you get four or more instances of nm-applet running when automatically starting gnome services and you are not using a session manager, consider doing the following:

1. Kill all nm-applet processes
2. Add nm-applet --sm-disable to the autostarted applications (Settings->Session and Startup)
3. Log out of Xfce
4. Delete the XFCE session file (in ~/.cache/sessions/)
5. Log into Xfce

If you can see the network-manager-applet in the notification area while login as root but can't see it if login as a normal user, see section 4.3 Problems starting nm-applet as normal user below to configure the policy settings ( and show it in the panel).

Fluxbox and Other WMs

You will need the hicolor theme to be able to run nm-applet:

# pacman -S network-manager-applet hicolor-icon-theme gnome-icon-theme

After configuring your system for use with NetworkManager, to autostart the NetworkManager applet, go to Settings → Autostarted Applications then add, "nm-applet --sm-disable &". This should start up the network manager applet on startup. The "--sm-disable" option is used to prevent multiple instances of the nm-applet, and you should only need it if multiple instances are running when you startup.

• NetworkManager seems to have trouble loading on various box-environments and compiz. By using the ck-launch-session pre-fix, nm-applet seems to work correctly.

Ex.,

exec ck-launch-session startlxde

Command line

cnetworkmanager, from the AUR, can be used to configure connections from the command line.

Step 3: Configuration

Disable interfaces

If you want to use NetworkManager on an interface you will have to disable it in /etc/rc.conf. You can do this by placing a "!" in front of the interface of your choice, for example:

INTERFACES=(!eth0 !ath0)

NetworkManager parses /etc/rc.conf to see if you want to have a static or dynamic IP on your interfaces, so state your preferred configuration there.

Example for static IP:

 eth0="eth0 172.19.3.18 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 172.19.3.255"

Example for dynamic IP:

 eth0="dhcp"

Set hostname

By default NetworkManager 0.7 will do a reverse lookup of your IP to determine your hostname. Generally, this will result in "localhost" or "localhost.localdomain". It will also attempt to manipulate the hostname of the system on the fly which will occasionally break Xorg.

The solution is to create the file /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf, and add the following:

[main]
plugins = keyfile
 
[keyfile]
hostname = <your hostname>

Make sure you verify that /etc/hosts is correct before continuing as NetworkManager may have altered it already before you had a chance to change this setting.

Edit daemons

You must disable the default network daemon and add the dbus, hal, and networkmanager daemons in this order:

DAEMONS=( ... !network dbus hal networkmanager ... )

pacman -S gamin

pacman -Rsu fam

Get in the network group

Add yourself to the network group, replacing USERNAME with the appropriate user name:

# gpasswd -a USERNAME network

Configure network services

There are quite a few network services that you will not want running until NetworkManager brings up an interface. Good examples are ntpd and network filesystem mounts of various types. NetworkManager can start these services when you bring an interface up, and stop them when you bring it down.

To use this feature, add scripts to /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d and make them executable for all users. For security, make them owned by root:root and writable only by the owner. The scripts will be run in alphabetical order at interface up time (with arguments interface up), and in reverse alphabetical order at interface down time (with arguments interface down). To ensure what order they come up in, simply add an alphabetical character and an underscore at the front of the script name; for example, a_portmap and b_netfs (which ensures that the portmapper is up before NFS mounts are attempted).

A useful naming scheme: a_portmap b_netfs c_ntpdate d_ntpd e_cups f_clamav. Typical usage for this is running a local NTP server on a system that does not connect to foreign wireless networks, and that also employs NFS mounts. There is no point in cups if you are not on the network. Clamav's freshclam signature updater requires networking to connect.

Proxy settings

Network Manager does not directly handle proxy settings.

See: Proxy settings

PolicyKit issues

Because many Display Managers (including KDM) do not natively support policykit at login, you will run into some permission issues with D-Bus and NetworkManager.

While there are several options to resolve this issue, choose only one:

• Install Consolekit and add the following line to /etc/pam.d/kde:

 session       optional        pam_ck_connector.so

• Add the following lines to /etc/dbus-1/system.d/NetworkManager.conf:

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

If this does not work, check if there are any policy errors by starting NetworkManager manually:

 # kill `pidof NetworkManager`
 # NetworkManager --no-daemon

• Put the following script in ~/.kde4/Autostart or similar for other WMs or DEs:

 #!/bin/bash
 ck-launch-session

• If none of those work, refer to this thread: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=63576

Troubleshooting

Some fixes to common problems.

Network Management Disabled

Sometimes when NM shuts down the pid (state) file does not get removed and you will get a 'Network management disabled' message. If this happens, you'l have to remove it manually:

rm /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state

If this happens upon reboot, you can add an action to your etc/rc.local to have it removed upon bootup:

nmpid=/var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state
[ -f $nmpid ] && rm $nmpid

DHCP problems

If you have problems with getting an IP via DHCP try to add the following to your /etc/dhclient.conf:

 interface "eth0" {
   send dhcp-client-identifier 01:aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff;
 }

Where aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff is the MAC-adress of this NIC.

Problems starting nm-applet as normal user

Sometimes, the gnome applet fails to start with the following error:

** (nm-applet:2941): WARNING **: <WARN>  applet_dbus_manager_start_service(): Could not acquire the NetworkManagerUserSettings
service.
  Message: 'Connection ":1.19" is not allowed to own the service "org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerUserSettings" due to security
policies in the configuration file'

Or if you can see the nm-applet icon in xfce4's panel's notification area while login as root but can't see it if login as a normal user, it could indicate you need to modify the policy settings to get nm-applet started as normal user. (Try to start nm-applet in terminal as normal user will give you the error above.)

This depends on NetworkManager changing its behaviour since version 0.7, ignoring the "network" group altogether and instead uses ConsoleKit, which seems to be problematic at times. This solution was provided by madhatter:

Add the following to your /etc/dbus-1/system.d/NetworkManager.conf

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

And to /etc/dbus-1/system.d/nm-applet.conf

    <policy group="network">
        <allow own="org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerUserSettings"/>
        <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerUserSettings"
               send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerUserSettings"/>

        <deny send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerSettings.Secrets"/>
    </policy>

Loutout and back you should have it in the panel and can select any network to connect, type the password then you are ready to go.

For OpenVpn you need to add following line in /etc/dbus-1/system.d/NetworkManager.conf

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

in section <policy at_console="true">.

Missing default route

On at least one KDE4 system, no default route was created when establishing wireless connections with NetworkManager. Changing the route settings of the wireless connection to remove the default selection "Use only for resources on this connection" solved the issue.

3G modem not detected

If NetworkManager (from v0.7.999) does not detect your 3G modem, but you still can connect using wvdial, try installing modemmanager package using pacman -S modemmanager and restart NetworkManager daemon with /etc/rc.d/networkmanager restart. Replug your modem or restart.

VPN problems in Networkmanager 0.7.999

If you get the error message "invalid secrets" when trying to connect to your VPN provider using the PPTP protocol, try installing the git versions instead: networkmanager, nm-applet and the pptp plugin.

Tips and tricks

Checking if networking is up inside a cron job or script

Some cron jobs require networking to be up to succeed. You may wish to avoid running these jobs when the network is down. To accomplish this, add an if test for networking that queries NetworkManager's nm-tool and checks the state of networking. The test shown here succeeds if any interface is up, and fails if they are all down. This is convenient for laptops that might be hardwired, might be on wireless, or might be off the network.

if [ `nm-tool|grep State|cut -f2 -d' '` == "connected" ]; then
       #Whatever you want to do if the network is online
else
       #Whatever you want to do if the network is offline - note, this and the else above are optional
fi

This useful for a cron.hourly script that runs fpupdate for the F-Prot virus scanner signature update, as an example. Another way it might be useful, with a little modification, is to differentiate between networks using various parts of the output from nm-tool; for example, since the active wireless network is denoted with an asterisk, you could grep for the network name and then grep for a literal asterisk.

Automatically unlock keyring after login

This will prevent nm-applet from asking for your keyring password.

• In /etc/pam.d/gdm (or your corresponding daemon in /etc/pam.d), add these lines at the end of the "auth" and "session" blocks if they do not exist already:

 auth            optional        pam_gnome_keyring.so
 session         optional        pam_gnome_keyring.so  auto_start

• In /etc/pam.d/passwd, use this line for the 'password' block:

 password    optional    pam_gnome_keyring.so

Next time you log in, you should be asked if you want the password to be unlocked automatically on login.

• Put a script like the following in ~/.kde4/Autostart:

 $!/bin/sh
 echo PASSWORD | /usr/bin/pam-keyring-tool --unlock --keyring=default -s

Similar should work with openbox, lxde, etc.

Automatically connect on boot

Since version 0.7 the NetworkManager is able to connect on boot, before a user has logged in and unlocked the keyring.

• First make sure that the keyfile plugin is loaded; /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf should look like this:

 [main]
 plugins=keyfile

• If this was not in the file before, you have to restart nm-system-settings:

 # killall -TERM nm-system-settings

or simply reboot.

• Now grant your user the right to modify system-connections with:

 $ sudo polkit-auth --grant org.freedesktop.network-manager-settings.system.modify --user "YOURUSERNAME"

Finally, in the connection-editor, check the Available to all users box.

The connection is now saved in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/"CONNECTION NAME". On reboot, NetworkManager will try to connect to it, when in range.

Ignore specific devices

Sometimes it is desired, that network manager ignores some devices and do not try to get an IP.

• First you have to find out the Hal UDI (e.g. with lshal):

 ...
 info.product = 'Networking Interface'  (string)
 info.subsystem = 'net'  (string)
 info.udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/net_00_1f_11_01_06_55'  (string)
 linux.hotplug_type = 2  (0x2)  (int)
 linux.subsystem = 'net'  (string)
 ...

• Add the udi to /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf:

 [keyfile]
   unmanaged-devices=/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/net_00_1f_11_01_06_55

Multiple devices can be specified, delimited by semicolons:

 [keyfile]
   unmanaged-devices=/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/net_00_1f_11_01_06_55;/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/net_00_2c_6d_e2_08_af

You do not need to restart networkmanager for the changes to take effect.

See also

• Wireless Setup
• The official NetworkManager's website