Wifi password not copied to new install since netplan transition

[Jeremy Bícha]

This is related to bug 2036999 except this is for the new Ubuntu Desktop Installer and the other bug is for Ubiquity ("legacy" installer)

What happened?
==============
If a Wifi password is provided during the install, the Wifi network is supposed to be preconfigured with that password after install. It's not working with Ubuntu 23.10.

Steps to reproduce
==================
Use the new Ubuntu Desktop installer to install Ubuntu 23.10 from a computer that has a wifi card
During the install, connect to a password-protected wifi network
After the install, the computer should be automatically connected to that network

Additional context
==================
20230920 Ubuntu Desktop Mantic ISO

Ubuntu Desktop 23.10 now uses Netplan as the NetworkManager backend.

I do have a /etc/netplan/90-NM-{redacted-UUID}.yaml file which has the network listed but it doesn't seem to have the password saved.

wifi-security.auth-alg: "open" does not sound right to me.

network:
  version: 2
  wifis
    NM-{redacted-UUID}:
      renderer: NetworkManager
      match:
        name: "wlp2s0"
      dhcp4: true
      dhcp6: true
      access-points:
        "{redacted Access Point name}":
          auth:
            key-management: "psk"
          networkmanager:
            uuid: "{redacted-UUID}"
            name: "{redacted Access Point name}"
            passthrough:
              wifi-security.auth-alg: "open"
              ipv6.addr-gen-mode: "default"
              ipv6.ip6-privacy: "-1"
              proxy._: ""
      networkmanager:
        uuid: "{redacted-UUID}"
         name: "{redacted Access Point name}"

This bug was cross-posted from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-desktop-installer/issues/2348

[Ubuntu QA Website (ubuntuqa)]

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
https://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/2036997

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Adding a netplan entry for cross reference even if that's probably not an issue with netplan itself

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The issue is probably that https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-desktop-installer/blob/main/snap/local/postinst.d/10_copy_network_config needs to be updated to copy /etc/netplan/ in addition/instead of /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections

Netplan team, could be confirm that it's the right directory we want to copy over?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Reading the description there is also a question on the netplan configuration generated and on where the password is stored?

[Danilo Egea Gondolfo (danilogondolfo)]

Hi Seb,

Yes, copying /etc/netplan should be enough to fix this.

Although, in the live system (testing the beta image here), there is a file called /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml that we maybe don't want to copy? It has two connections, zz-all-en and zz-all-eth. If we copy it, the user will find these two connections in their system (it will show up in nmcli con show for example).

So we probably just want to copy /etc/netplan/01-network-manager-all.yaml and anything that starts with /etc/netplan/90-NM-* (because these are the files created when the interfaces are configured in the live system).

The WPA password will be stored in the yaml file.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks. Do you know what is creating /etc/netplan/01-network-manager-all.yaml ? It seems we shouldn't need that one since ubuntu-settings already include /lib/netplan/00-network-manager-all.yaml

[Danilo Egea Gondolfo (danilogondolfo)]

Ah yes, 00-network-manager-all.yaml is installed by the ubuntu-settings package. I'm not sure where 01-network-manager-all.yaml comes from, but ubuntu-settings is removing it [1] (if the user didn't change it manually). So it's apparently some legacy stuff.

[1] - https://git.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-settings/tree/debian/ubuntu-settings.postinst#n11

[Lukas Märdian (slyon)]

/etc/netplan/01-network-manager-all.yaml is legacy stuff, installed by livecd-rootfs. Nowadays, it moved to /usr/lib/netplan/00-network-manager-all.yaml, provided by the "ubuntu-settings" package, as mentioned by Danilo.

So this bug is mostly about the installer side. I'm closing the Netplan bug task.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Which was fixed in https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-desktop-installer/pull/2355