Unmanaged network icon - Network manangement disabled

Question

I was having problems connecting to the internet either by wireless or wired connection. I keep getting an icon in the systray that has a tooltip that says "unmanaged" and when I click on it I get a "Network management disabled".

I googled and found the command:

sudo dhclient eth0

Which finally enabled my network and I have net. The problem is I still get the icon with the some word "unmanaged"

Can anyone help me out? I just want to know what is happening and why did I had to go to the command line to enable my network.

I had to put the computer in sleep mode and then it wouldn't wake up, so I rebooted the machine. The network manager problems started again, this time the file mentioned by maco had the value set to true and it still wouldn't work.

Anyone know how I can make this permanently work? I did a

sudo init 0

And when I booted the machine at a later time I had the network manager enabled. Have no clue why.

For problems in 16.10, please see Ethernet device not managed. — jokerdino, Apr 18 '17 at 08:10
I installed desktop on Ubuntu server: to solve I followed instructions on this post: https://www.raytechnote.com/wired-unmanaged-after-install-ubuntu-desktop-gui-on-ubuntu-server/ — GKJ, Jun 30 '19 at 10:48

score 35 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 14 '23 at 17:17

35

I find this happens after a bad shutdown. Just change

managed=false

to

managed=true

in /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf

Note: In newer versions of Ubuntu, the file is at /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf

Then restart service

service network-manager restart

edited Mar 14 '23 at 17:17

João Pimentel Ferreira

1,174

answered Aug 22 '10 at 23:27

maco

15,892

Thanks so much!!! I edited the file, rebooted and it worked great :) Thanks!!!!!!!!!!! – AntonioCS Aug 23 '10 at 16:16
I edited the question to add that the same thing has happened again and your solution unfortunately doesn't seem to work any more. I had to switch to gnome to use the wireless connections available :( – AntonioCS Aug 24 '10 at 10:20
3

maco's solution now requires editing of /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf. The setting is still the same. – Kenny May 16 '12 at 02:30
After changing the .conf file you have to restart the network manager. For Debian/Ubuntu issue this command: sudo service network-manager restart – Stelian Jan 29 '17 at 10:04
1

This solution doesn't work for me in 16.10. – user1063287 Apr 12 '17 at 06:59
1

worked for me 18.04 – Sudheera May 11 '18 at 07:38
2

Instead of rebooting, service network-manager restart will also work. – aggregate1166877 Nov 25 '18 at 21:01

score 15 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 12 '18 at 14:45

15

This worked for Ubuntu 17.04

sudo touch /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/10-globally-managed-devices.conf
sudo service network-manager restart

edited Nov 12 '18 at 14:45

Kulfy

17,696

answered Jun 14 '17 at 00:33

Robin Ramsey

151

Oh jeez this had been plaguing an installation of Bionic I did on ZFS using debootstrap for hours, I was beginning to think nothing would ever work. THANK YOU!!! – Avery Freeman Apr 23 '18 at 10:43
worked also on Ubuntu 18.04 in which the NetworkManager suddenly stopped. – Trisoloriansunscreen Sep 18 '18 at 18:13
1

Thanks, worked for me. Ubuntu 20.04. Probably bad Software Updater package caused no wired connection... – Tarasovych Sep 22 '20 at 20:03

score 9 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 23 '17 at 19:21

9

I've just upgraded from Ubuntu 16.04 to 16.10. After that, this problem started to happen to me. In my case, I've solved it following the suggestion given in Ubuntu's launchpad:

touch /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/10-globally-managed-devices.conf

This creates an empty file.

answered Mar 23 '17 at 19:21

Baumann

221

1

I had the same problem and only this helped me! – Apr 13 '17 at 18:46
Thanks, this helped me finally fix this problem after an upgrade to 17.04. – FrontierPsychiatrist Apr 16 '17 at 09:34
Thanks, this was the only solution that worked for me in 18.04 – adamgy Jul 06 '20 at 21:41

score 8 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 16 '17 at 05:25

8

You should look at the contents of the file /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state. It should look something like this:

[main]
NetworkingEnabled=true
WirelessEnabled=true
WWANEnabled=true

Change any from 'false' to 'true' to re-enable networking. It may work better if you first stop NetworkManager:

sudo stop network-manager

And start it again once done. Or reboot :)

In any case, this is frequent when a suspended system fails to wake up. It should be fixed in Maverick.

edited Apr 16 '17 at 05:25

Zanna

70,465

answered Sep 07 '10 at 20:20

Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre

2,687

+1 Massive help for me... Thx. Countless hours fiddling with network settings until I decided to hit the stack exchange. Silly me. – Russ Dec 19 '10 at 02:44
This! I've been stuck on this all day! Thanks! – assafmo Dec 01 '17 at 13:48

score 7 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 16 '17 at 00:54

7

I just upgraded from Ubuntu 16.04 to 16.10. I have 3 network cards (all configured) and no Wifi. All 3 cards were disabled, all options on the Network Manager menu were greyed out, so clicking them does nothing. I fixed it by combining two of the solutions above:

Edit /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf and change:

managed=false

to

managed=true

Restarted network-manager:

sudo service network-manager restart

No change. Then I tried:

touch /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/10-globally-managed-devices.conf
sudo service network-manager restart

All three network cards came back on-line.

answered Apr 16 '17 at 00:54

Earl Ruby

735

the fix is weird, and the post above is not exactly correct. – rob grune Apr 21 '17 at 05:09
After a lot of research this was the only one that worked for me. Thanks! – six2dez May 30 '19 at 12:10

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 06 '18 at 12:12

I installed ubuntu-gnome-desktop to ubuntu server 14.04.4 and the file was not nm-system-settings.conf, but NetworkManager.conf

As in sudo gedit etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf I could not find nm-system-settings.conf Perhaps it is not installed (nm-system-settings) as I do not see it on the gnome Panel bar in the gnome classic view desktop. Need to get the Network going to do updates and install gnome-session-flashback to get the Gnome-Flashback (Metacity) on 14.04.4 LTS, my Favorite desktop!

I had not checked /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state before reboot but, perhaps it was updated after reboot as it was correct.

score 0 · Answer 7 · edited Jan 06 '13 at 01:39

0

Try right-clicking the NetworkManager icon and enabling the network from that menu.

edited Jan 06 '13 at 01:39

Eliah Kagan

117,780

answered Aug 24 '10 at 00:36

Alexey Nedilko

91

1

It doesn't work. I just get a "Network management disabled" – AntonioCS Aug 24 '10 at 08:41

Unmanaged network icon - Network manangement disabled

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