Enterprise wifi password is unnecessarily asked on boot

[Daniele Castrovilli]

Lightdm does not store my wifi password, for classic wifi is ok it stores every password, but for eap/peap wifi configuration it doesn't store any password and it asks me every time wifi password before login.
Bug recognized in ubuntu 13.04 and 13.10 and probably in ubuntu 14.04 (testing).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
Package: lightdm 1.8.4-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.11.0-15.23-generic 3.11.10
Uname: Linux 3.11.0-15-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
ApportVersion: 2.12.5-0ubuntu2.2
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Jan 20 11:52:45 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-12-28 (22 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.10 "Saucy Salamander" - Release amd64 (20131016.1)
LightdmConfig:
 [SeatDefaults]
 greeter-session=unity-greeter
 user-session=ubuntu
MarkForUpload: True
SourcePackage: lightdm
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

Reassigning to unity-greeter though it is really controlled by network manager / the indicator

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Jano (jherder)]

the wifi prompt appears when i boot up and my computer tries to connect to my universities eduroam network (which is peap secured). it is particularly annoying because i loose focus on the password prompt of the lightdm login manager when the popup appears. besides the wifi prompt doesnt look nice without decorations.

[Heimir Freyr (heimir.freyr)]

My problem is identical to comment #4, also involving eduroam. First I thought it failed due to permissions on a specific CA-certificate provided by the university or it residing in an inaccessible directory prior to login.

However, making the certificate readable by everyone and placing it on the root '/' rather than in my home directory did not resolve the issue. Also, the wifi login information is accepted at the unity-greeter stage and a connection is estabilshed successfully (indicating that the certificate is being used), only to be forgotten at the next system login.

Once logged in as user in the Unity shell, the connection is again established with the password etc. remembered (by the Unity shell).

[Tomo Popovic (tp0x45)]

It is fairly annoying. In reference to #4, a WORKAROUND is once logged in to connect to your WiFi connection (i.e. eduroam). Then click on the network icon in the top panel, select Edit Connections and change settings for your connection (i.e. eduroam). Go to the General tab, and uncheck "All users may connect to this network". It will prevent Ubuntu from trying to connect to it while in the Login window.

I hope this helps.

[Horst Schirmeier (horst)]

I have the same issue, but using Xfce4. Another workaround is to manually edit /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/eduroam (or whichever SSID is affected in your case) and to replace "password-flags=1" with "password=MYPASSWORD", this allows automatic connection for me.

[Neil Broadley (scaine)]

Can confirm that #7 works on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64-bit which is also affected by this bug.

However, obviously this is pretty weak, since in many cases, the PEAP password is your AD/LDAP credential, so when you store it in the /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections file that represents your SSID, you're giving your password to anyone with root access on the laptop.

Full disk encryption helps with general security outwith the home folder here, but it doesn't stop anyone with root displaying that file and learning your password.

I'd also note that I need to have connected to my SSID before entering my lightDM password because otherwise pam_mount will fail to map any of my drives (and will fail silently thereafter too) if I don't.

[David Collins (c3097481)]

Bug still on Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS

[Christian Juner (christian-juner)]

Still on Ubuntu 16.04.

[Kitsab (kitsab)]

Hello,

I had the same issue, it went away after I moved my certificates from inside my home directory into a self created subpath of root:
Certificate storage path with error appearing:
/home/myuser/.cert/{certificate files}
Certificate storage path now, with error disappeared:
/somefolder/{certificate files}

Hopefully this helps-

Best regards

Kitsab

[Kitsab (kitsab)]

Sorry last post was related to another issue