unused wifi interfaces can't be optional

[Jason Cipriani]

The following netplan configuration is not possible (where wlo1 is a wifi interface):

wifis:
    wlo1:
        optional: true

When trying to apply this, netplan complains that no access points are defined (which is the point of making it optional).

The consequence is that any system with a wifi interface that isn't being used is doomed to take 3 minutes on boot "waiting for network configuration", because the wifi interface can't be made optional, because it doesn't have an access point configured, which is why it needs to be optional in the first place.

This seems like an unnecessary frustration.

Netplan should allow wifi interfaces to be configured without access points and simply not configure a connection to an access point in that case.

[Lukas Märdian (slyon)]

I can see your frustration here, but I wonder: Why would you want to define the wifi interface at all if you're not going to configure/use it?

Would dropping the "wifis.wlo1" definition resolve your usecase?

[Jason Cipriani (jason-cipriani)]

No; if you drop the wifis.wlo1 definition then the system hangs for 3-4 minutes at boot while waiting for the unconfigured wifi interface to come up.

That's why it needs to be made "optional" if it's unused -- to stop the system from hanging on boot.

But there's no way to configure it as "optional" if it's unused with netplan, because netplan requires "access-points".

[Jason Cipriani (jason-cipriani)]

The only workaround I've found is to define "access-points" with a dummy AP that probably doesn't exist (just keyboard mashing an AP name). Then, I can declare it as "optional", and avoid the boot hangs. It's unfortunate that netplan makes me do this.

[Lukas Märdian (slyon)]

Could you please paste your full Netplan configuration? Is the wifi interface (wlo1) the only interface on this system? Are there any ethernet interfaces up-and-running?

Also what version of Ubuntu and Netplan are you using to observer those issues. (There were some recent changes in Netplan, as of 1.0/1.1 to improve the wait-online situation.)