[[intrepid]] nm-applet can't start: permission issues

running nm-applet as sudo temporarily fixed the issue for me.

I am also running nm-applet with sudo until problem solved.

I confirm Edward Clarc and Dean Loros.

jfernyhough has found a better fix here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NetworkManager

Change the default policy context in both /etc/dbus-1/system.d/NetworkManager.conf and /etc/dbus-1/system.d/nm-applet.conf so it says 'allow' instead of 'deny'.

<policy context="default">
<allow own="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>
<allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>
<allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>
</policy>

Then restart dbus

sudo /etc/init.d/dbus restart

and launch the applet

nm-applet

I am unable to reproduce this bug, but since a handful of people have confirmed this issue, I will mark the bug as triaged with the following information from an up to date install of Intrepid:

(network-manager-applet should derive its version from network-manager-gnome)

connor@lappy686-testing:~$ apt-cache policy network-manager-gnome
network-manager-gnome:
  Installed: 0.6.6-0ubuntu3
  Candidate: 0.6.6-0ubuntu3
  Version table:
 *** 0.6.6-0ubuntu3 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

connor@lappy686-testing:~$ apt-cache policy network-manager
network-manager:
  Installed: 0.6.6-0ubuntu7
  Candidate: 0.6.6-0ubuntu7
  Version table:
 *** 0.6.6-0ubuntu7 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

connor@lappy686-testing:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu intrepid (development branch)
Release: 8.10
Codename: intrepid

Thank you for reporting this bug.

Hi. original reporter here:

The issue seemed to be caused from the upload of consolekit 0.2.10-0ubuntu3.

My symptoms disappeared with consolekit 0.2.10-0ubuntu4.

Unless there is some greater issue in how network manager interacts with consolekit, I have no problem with the bug being closed.

Can any of the others who experienced this problem confirm that the problem disappeared with the newer version of consolekit?

Connor: there's was more discussion of this at the forums. I'm ccw

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=861871

Thank you, I did run into that thread yesterday actually. If more people can confirm that this is now working, I will change the status of the bug to Fix Released (since I was not able to reproduce the bug myself). If you are certain that the fix is available, then you may mark it as so at this time.

This issue has reappeared on my laptop. Don't know if I had problems when this bug was reported as I was away the whole month.

Trying to start nm-applet as desktop user yields the output from the original report.
Starting nm-applet as sudo works.

Have tried a purge/reinstall of network-manager and network-manager-gnome.

network-manager version: 0.7~~svn20080818t061112+eni0-0ubuntu1
network-manager-gnome: 0.7~~svn20080817t183748-0ubuntu1

After a clean install of Intrepid Alpha 4 I noticed I did'nt need the fix anymore, so I think it has been fixed for me.

Nice, really. this bug is also in gutsy :

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager-applet/+bug/261472

same error, maybe same "solving" (changing dbus configuration) ? I'll see in some minutes, when I can use my Boss' computer.

You don't need to run nm-applet as root...

I ran into this problem with a dist-upgrade performed today.

Simple way to get it back up and running is to kill any nm-applet currently running, then starting it back up...

pkill nm-applet
nm-applet

that's all I had to do to get it back up. Maybe the nm-applet crashed, but didn't release the dbus resources?

Still appears here:
$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 8.10
Release: 8.10
Codename: intrepid

$ killall -9 nm-applet
nm-applet: no process killed
$ nm-applet --sm-disable

** (nm-applet:14122): WARNING **: <WARN> applet_dbus_manager_start_service(): Could not acquire the NetworkManagerUserSettings service.
  Message: 'Connection ":1.21" is not allowed to own the service "org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerUserSettings" due to security policies in the configuration file'

(nm-applet:14122): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

$ apt-cache policy dbus network-manager network-manager-gnome consolekit
dbus:
  Installed: 1.2.4-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 1.2.4-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 1.2.4-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
network-manager:
  Installed: 0.7~~svn20081018t105859-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 0.7~~svn20081018t105859-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 0.7~~svn20081018t105859-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
network-manager-gnome:
  Installed: 0.7~~svn20081020t000444-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 0.7~~svn20081020t000444-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 0.7~~svn20081020t000444-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
consolekit:
  Installed: 0.2.10-1ubuntu8
  Candidate: 0.2.10-1ubuntu8
  Version table:
 *** 0.2.10-1ubuntu8 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Some of my configuration files:
$ cat /etc/network/interfaces
#auto lo
#iface lo inet loopback
#iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto br0
iface br0 inet dhcp
        bridge_ports eth0
        bridge_fd 9
        bridge_hello 2
        bridge_maxage 12
        bridge_stp off

$ cat /etc/dbus-1/system.d/NetworkManager.conf
<!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 send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>
                <allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>

  <allow own="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.PPP"/>
                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.PPP"/>
                <allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.PPP"/>
        </policy>
        <policy user="haldaemon">
                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>
                <allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>
        </policy>
        <policy at_console="true">
                <allow send_destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>
                <allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"/>
        </policy>
        <policy context="default">
                <deny own="org.freedeskt...

With sudo:
$ sudo nm-applet --sm-disable
** (nm-applet:14297): WARNING **: No connections defined

OK, I have purged the packages of network manager and installed again:
sudo aptitude purge network-manager network-manager-gnome
sudo aptitude install network-manager-gnome ubuntu-desktop
sudo aptitude reinstall dbus consolekit

Now it says (as a normal user):
$ nm-applet --sm-disable
** (nm-applet:6498): WARNING **: No connections defined

I believe it has something to do with my custom settings in /etc/network/interfaces (see comment #14)

The weird thing is.. I have connection from eth0 (it's on this machine) and br0 works fine talking to my kvm virtual machines

i get this when running nm-applet. does not matter if i runt it with sudo or not.

i did a netinstall and only installed gnome-core so i could be missing some stuff, but i cant come to think of anything.

$ sudo nm-applet --sm-disable
** (nm-applet:14297): WARNING **: No connections defined

should i file a new bug?

i get this nice error:

$ ** (nm-applet:7811): WARNING **: No connections defined

** (nm-applet:7811): WARNING **: <WARN> constructor(): Invalid connection: 'NMSettingConnection' / 'type' invalid: 3

I had this problem with nm-applet AND tracker-applet, so the real bug may be in the Notification area applet. In both cases, killing and restarting the applet helped.

larsemil, slinger, Ilya your issue is most likely bug 289466 ... just clean your /etc/network/interfaces from cruft should help.

closing this bug as the initial problem should be fixed by consolekit. It appears to attract false posters now. So bye bye bug.

Alexander just stupid question cause i am not that skilled. What should i clean up in my interfaces?

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth2
#iface eth2 inet dhcp

auto ath0
#iface ath0 inet dhcp

auto wlan0
#iface wlan0 inet dhcp

iface dsl-provider inet ppp
pre-up /sbin/ifconfig eth1 up # line maintained by pppoeconf
provider dsl-provider

iface eth1 inet static
address x.x.x.x
netmask x.x.x.x
gateway x.x.x.x

auto eth1

And why isn't there eth0 (my wlan device) in this list?

wlan0 is the interface for ipwraw module. eth0 is the device for iwl3945!

Just google but didn't found a default intrepid interfaces :( Sorry for maybe stupid questions but i dont want to make anything wrong!

All right got it! Sorry for massiv posting!

Reduced it to:

"auto lo
iface lo inet loopback"

Hi,
  I see the same problem on my machine...

s-ubuntu:~$ nm-applet

** (nm-applet:9028): WARNING **: No connections defined

This happens irrespective of what I have in my interfaces file... I am running the 8.10 version of Ubuntu Desktop on a Thinkpad T21.

This bug is still active as far as I am concerned I upgraded to intrepid yesterday (23/11/08. It appeared the first time I booted into ibex but not since. I've tried everything above to get it back the allow deny change etc and my interfaces is just

 auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

my wifi is working and my Ethernet card.

After upgrading from 8.04.1 to 8.10 this is still a problem for me as well. I have implement all the changes mention above, plus installed the latest nm from launchpad

nickh@nickh-desktop:~$ apt-cache policy network-manager-gnome
network-manager-gnome:
  Installed: 0.7~~svn20081020t000444-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 0.7~~svn20081020t000444-0ubuntu1
  Version table:

The machine is an HP DC7800 Quad core desktop machine. The applet shows as running, but there no icon on the task bar. When I have been able to get it too appear temporarily it shows the network as being down.

I'm using a static IP address, and it works perfectly ( thus this post), and I can change network settings by manually running the nm-connection-editor.

please test the network-manager applet in -proposed. that one should always show an icon at least. maybe giving you more hints whats the root cause.

Alexander, can you recommend what files need to be checked / examined to try and debug this problem specifically. Currently I have managed to get the icon showing permanently, even though it tells me I'm disconnected ;-) I'm obviously not, as I'm typing this post on that box.

The version I have installed is as shown above, which appears to be later than the proposed on launched pad

Mine: Installed: 0.7~~svn20081020t000444-0ubuntu1.8.10.1

Proposed: 0.7~~svn20081018t105859-0ubuntu1.8.10.1

I have installed the following in my sources to follow the latest builds:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/network-manager/ubuntu intrepid main

Nick

you have interfaces configured in /etc/network/interfaces ... applet might show offline, but thats just a minor glitch. all apps that ask NM for state see online now (except the applet itself).

ok Alexander, lets put it another way. The applet thinks the network is down when it isn't, so how can I make it change it's mind and then try and capture any output. The /etc/network/interfaces look fine, and have been configured using the nm-connection-editor util.

With the applet showing the network as down, all the functions are not working apart from the edit connections, which just calls the nm-connection-editor.

I not sure how I can feedback any info usless I know where to look for error messages , and how to poke it to try and get some error messages.

Would you say the version I have installed is the latest?

Nick

Progress is being made, with the latest build , the icon is now there, and you can start and stop the interface. The problem is now that you can't edit the settings , you get the following error message:

Updating connection failed: nm-ifupdown-connection.c.82 - connection update not supported (read-only)..

It doesn't matter if the adapter is connected or not.

So I'm having to manually edit /etc/resolv.conf just to update the DNS server I want to talk to.

Any thoughts?

This link fixes the last part of the problem.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=957237

Nick

nick wrote:
> Progress is being made, with the latest build , the icon is now there,
> and you can start and stop the interface. The problem is now that you
> can't edit the settings , you get the following error message:
>
> Updating connection failed: nm-ifupdown-connection.c.82 - connection
> update not supported (read-only)..
>
> It doesn't matter if the adapter is connected or not.
>
> So I'm having to manually edit /etc/resolv.conf just to update the DNS
> server I want to talk to.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
>
the applet bug should be fixed (as you noted). the ifupdown connections
_are_ read only. so thats a feature. Create a new connection or edit it
in /etc/network/interfaces directly (restart after that)

applet will now always start since latest -updates update.