Ubuntu
network-manager package

KNetworkManager can't enable networking, have to switch to GNOME to enable

Bug #576154 reported by walden.joshua@gmail.com on 2010-05-06

This bug report is a duplicate of: Bug #553994: knetworkmanager says "disabled", needs to reset networkmanager state. Edit Remove

This bug affects 3 people

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to
	network-manager (Ubuntu)	Confirmed	Undecided	Unassigned
Nominated for Lucid by Adam Porter
Nominated for Maverick by Adam Porter

Bug Description

Binary package hint: network-manager

KDE network-manager became disabled after a reboot and will not re-enable. Machine cant even attain internet connection through wired connection. Affected netbook is a SONY VPCW121AX.

See original description

walden.joshua@gmail.com (walden-joshua) on 2010-05-08

description:

updated

Revision history for this message

Adam Porter (alphapapa) wrote on 2010-05-11:

I had this problem also. I have both KDE and GNOME installed. In KDE I was unable to do anything with KNetworkManager--both the right-click and left-click only brought up "Networking is disabled." I switched to GNOME and saw in the panel that networking was disabled. I right-clicked on the indicator and clicked "Enable networking", and now it works.

I don't remember if I had disabled networking in the GNOME Network Manager, but that seems likely.

Anyway, if the GNOME one can enable networking, the KDE one should be able to also. However, I noticed that while the GNOME one has the ability to "Enable/disable networking," the KDE one only has "Enable/disable wireless." Is the KDE one missing this functionality altogether?

Changed in network-manager (Ubuntu):
status:	New → Confirmed
summary:	- Network-Manager disabled and wont enable + KNetworkManager can't enable networking, have to switch to GNOME to + enable

Revision history for this message

skierpage (skierpage) wrote on 2010-06-02:

This happens to me regularly, every time I have a problem in standby, shutdown, or resume.

The same bug in Debian is http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=576279 "network-manager-kde: Tray icon non-functional, shows "Network Management disabled" message". I think this bug is the same as Bug #553994 in plasma-widget-networkmanagement (Ubuntu): “knetworkmanager doesn't connect with networkmanager”?

In my case (and many others, Google "NetworkManager.state knetworkmanager") the reason the underlying NetworkManager system isn't running is probably bug #524454 ; at some point NetworkManager writes out a /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state file containing
NetworkingEnabled=false
and so it does nothing on reboot! Restarting knetworkmanager/NetworkManager won't help, it'll just see NetworkingEnabled=false and remain disabled. This suggests knetworkmanager may need to both re-enable and restart NetworkManager.

So another workaround (besides running Gnome's Network Manager) is in a terminal enter the commands
sudo rm var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state
sudo restart network-manager
You may have to manually kick networking back on with commands like `sudo ifconfig eth0 up` (where eth0 is your network interface) and `sudo dhclient`.