Directly manipulating NetworkManager keyfiles

[Lukas Märdian]

The affected packages can manipulate NetworkManager keyfiles directly on disk, which might not be appropriate anymore on Ubuntu, since the Netplan integration was enabled in NetworkManager (starting with Mantic), migrating any keyfile configuration from /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/*[.nmconnection] to /etc/netplan/90-NM-*.yaml

See Netplan's documentation for how connections are handled:
https://netplan.readthedocs.io/en/latest/netplan-everywhere/

PS: Packages were queried using:
https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=%2Fsystem-connections&literal=1&perpkg=1

[Lukas Märdian (slyon)]

Netplan deals with keyfiles in /run/NetworkManager/system-connections not /etc/...

[Lukas Märdian (slyon)]

netcfg is not part of Ubuntu anymore (got dropped post Focal)

[Lukas Märdian (slyon)]

We should run the same query on the Ubuntu archive, too. The security team (sespiros / sarnold) might be able to help with this in the future.

[Seth Arnold (seth-arnold)]

jammy, lunary, and mantic:

for distro in jammy lunar mantic ; do for component in main universe multiverse restricted ; do for-archive /srv/mirror/ubuntu/dists/$distro/$component/source/Sources.gz /srv/mirror/ubuntu/ ~/bin/for-archive-tools/unpack-search '/system-connections' ; done ; done | tee ~/system-connections-$(date +%d-%H:%M:%S)

[James Falcon (falcojr)]

Invalid for cloud-init because the affected code is for rendering NetworkManager config on (non-Ubuntu) systems that are not using netplan.

[Lukas Märdian (slyon)]

cruft is not part of Ubuntu anymore (got dropped post Kinetic)

[Lukas Märdian (slyon)]

Thank you @seth-arnold! I've updated the affected packages of this bug and (bug #2019939) accordingly.

[Arif Ali (arif-ali)]

Invalid for sosreport

We collect NetworkManager and netplan data depending what is available

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Have any snaps been looked at e.g. subiquity or ubuntu-desktop-installer?

[Alexandre Detiste (alexandre-detiste)]

Please provide output of "cruft-ng" on an updated system. I'm not running Ubuntu.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package cruft-ng - 0.9.55

---------------
cruft-ng (0.9.55) unstable; urgency=low

  [ Christian Göttsche ]
  * Misc tweaks to rules: chkrootkit, geoipupdate,
    selinux (Closes: #1033804)

  [ NicolasJamar ]
  * refresh misc filters for Debian, Ubuntu & Pop_OS

  [ Alexandre Detiste ]
  * move the bulk of Ubuntu rules out of the way,
    only handle /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/*
    on Debian (LP: #2019940)
  * add a generic explain script for runit-helper

 -- Alexandre Detiste <email address hidden> Sun, 11 Jun 2023 17:18:27 +0200

[Simon Quigley (tsimonq2)]

I patched this upstream in Calamares a month or two ago, and it made it into the 3.3.0 tag, which Lubuntu now has.

Calamares will support both, it just now *also* supports Netplan. (If the NM config doesn't exist, no harm no foul no error.)