I easily repair broken NetworkManager in Debian Lenny

By Steven Rosenberg on July 30, 2009 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) |

It's usually not this easy.

Ever since I did this test Debian Lenny installation with encrypted LVM, I've had trouble with NetworkManager, the package that allows for "easy" management of networking settings. A lot of people dislike this package and prefer to do everything manually. I'm OK with manual configuration, but I like the easy of using this utility.

The problem was that when I went to System - Administration - Network in the GNOME desktop in Debian Lenny, I would get the applet but not the sign-in. I didn't have to supply the root password to modify the settings.

But none of those settings would stick, either. I had to manually configure the network to get the bits flowing.

I had the idea that if I reinstalled all the NetworkManager-related packages, that action might set things right.

So in the Synaptic Package Manager, I searched for NetworkManager. I reinstalled everything that had to do with it:

libnm-glib0
libnm-util0
network-manager
network-manager-gnome

Then I rebooted. I went back into NetworkManager to change my networking (the networks I had set up were still there).

A check of ifconfig in a root terminal:

# ifconfig

revealed that my networking STILL hadn't changed. But a check of /etc/resolv.conf showed that my nameservers DID change.

So I used the root terminal and vi to edit /etc/network/interfaces and REMOVED the static IP lines in there, leaving only these for eth0:

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
auto eth0

I rebooted again, tried NetworkManager again ... and it worked. I'm back in business in Debian Lenny.

Geek addendum: I still feel a lot more comfortable hacking into the basic networking configuration files in OpenBSD due to a) familiarity, b) better design and c) better documentation.

Further geek addendum: I toyed with the idea of setting up multiple NICs (wired and wireless) manually with /etc/network/interfaces containing separate nameservers for each NIC. I couldn't figure it out, but I'm sure it's doable.

What this means: I'm ready to go with the Debian Lenny fully encrypted LVM test. I've always enjoyed the relative quickness of Debian over Ubuntu, and I don't see the encryption slowing me down all that much. We'll see how I feel if and when I rsync everything onto this laptop.

2 Comments

stozwald

said:

I spent several hours getting network-manager-gnome up and running on
my laptop last night, and I think there are a couple of things you
might not have caught on to (or maybe you have -- I'm new to both
Gnome and Network Manager). The thing is, it seems like you might
think you're running network-manager-gnome, and you're not. I don't
know what program is at System -> Administration -> Network (I have it
too), but it's not network-manager-gnome. To get the applet you want
running, you have to call nm-applet. That starts up
network-manager-gnome and puts a little icon thingy in the top right
of your desktop (again, I'm not a Gnome user -- sorry for lame
terminology).

The thing is, when you DO start network-manager-gnome, you'll find
it's unhappy with your current setup. It wants complete control of
your network, and to give it that you need to go back into
/etc/network/interfaces and comment out or delete all lines refering
to any interface but localhost. Here is my complete file:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

Any more than that, and network-manager-gnome won't work. But with
that, it pretty much makes configuration a snap.

Good luck with this. I only figured it out last night, and I sure
don't pretend to have all the answers, but this worked for me.

August 2, 2009 8:36 AM

Steven Rosenberg

said:

I did leave some eth0 stuff in my /etc/network/interfaces ... but not enough seemingly to keep the NetworkManager packages from doing their job.

August 3, 2009 11:58 AM

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