NetworkManager has forgotten Wi-Fi password on resume from suspend

[David Dean]

I've been keeping up with the oneirc updates, but within the past couple of days, the network manager has forgotten my wifi password, and every time I suspend or restart the computer I have to enter the password again.

Looking at the password and keys setting application, there no longer appears to be a 'Network Secret' saved for my home (or work) wifi account, although there are some other less-used networks still in there.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: network-manager 0.9.1.90-0ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-12.20-generic 3.0.4
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-12-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
CRDA: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Date: Mon Oct 10 22:39:53 2011
IfupdownConfig:
 auto lo
 iface lo inet loopback
IpRoute:
 default via 10.1.1.1 dev wlan0 proto static
 10.1.1.0/24 dev wlan0 proto kernel scope link src 10.1.1.8 metric 2
 169.254.0.0/16 dev wlan0 scope link metric 1000
IwConfig: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Keyfiles: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
NetDevice.eth0:
 Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
 X: INTERFACE_MAC=3c:4a:92:50:86:b4
NetDevice.lo:
 Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
 X: INTERFACE_MAC=00:00:00:00:00:00
NetDevice.wlan0:
 Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
 X: INTERFACE_MAC=4c:0f:6e:40:78:a0
NetworkManager.state:
 [main]
 NetworkingEnabled=true
 WirelessEnabled=true
 WWANEnabled=true
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
RfKill: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
SourcePackage: network-manager
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-09-27 (13 days ago)

[David Dean (ddean-ieee)]

Ok, this seems to be somewhat related to bug #854833, but the "Available to all users" checkbox which is suggested as a workaround in that bug was grayed out for me.

However, if I deleted the wireless network that was causing the problem and then reconnect to it, the newly created wireless network does have the "Available to all users" checkbox available (and ticked) and it now does remember my wireless password between suspends and restarts.

I guess this was caused by a migration issue when a package was updated recently, but I'm not sure exactly when it first occurred.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[BenNewton (ben-m-newton)]

Indeed the 'available to all users' work around fixed it for me too.
ddean-ieee thanks for doing the hard work of posting the bug.

[LV Lammert (lvl)]

Just updated 11.10 on my 32-bit Netbook, and it, too, is forgetting 'network secrets' on each WiFi network!

Seems like the amd64 problem has propagated to the 32 bit world????

Also, there is no 'Available to all users' option AT ALL at this point.

[oriolpont (oriolpont)]

Since gnome3, NetworkManager no longer uses GConf but writes on /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/
The 'available to all users' workaround has the main problem that then for the imported accounts this will save passwords to etc in plaintext and no longer in the encrypted gnome-keyring. If your network password is part of another account (eg LDAP) this can be a problem.

So the solution would be to remember the password in the keyring as it was before instead of forgetting it
(there is the option psk-flags=1 in system-connections which apparently could be used for that)