[Hardy] Cannot change settings in network settings (permissions)

Thanks for your bug report. I think you should also have in /etc/network/interfaces something like:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.103
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1

For static, and just:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

For roaming.
Did you enter your password at the prompt to run network-settings as root? Could that have expired by the time you clicked to enable roaming?
What type of card are you using, and what version of Ubuntu?

I'm sorry, I forgot to tell it - I run updated Hardy. These problems occur immediately after I unlock the dialog (the unlock button is the new feature in Hardy I believe). Whatever I do right now (change roaming to DHCP or to IPv4 LL), I always get the permission error. interfaces file always contains only loopback, I didn't change it myself in any way.

And there's something else I noticed, there is one process which appears to be stuck doing nothing (I closed all dialogs):
root 5676 0.0 2.1 13120 10936 ? S Jan24 0:00 perl /usr/share//system-tools-backends-2.0/scripts/SystemToolsBackends.pl -m Platform

The problem seems like the permission error...
If you add those lines to interfaces, does it fix anything?

No, it just makes the settings get stuck to static IP (first one) or non-roaming DHCP (second one). I still get the same permission error.

Okay, I'll change the bug to reflect this...

A few more questions...
Do you get the error for setting anything, or just roaming? Can you change other things that just won't actually get applied?

I cannot anything else:
- change hostname - I accept and close, no change & no error
- add DNS server, close, no change & no error
- add host, close, no change & no error
However:
- I enabled my wireless card, changed roaming to static WEP, entered some random data for essid, key,... - after I clicked ok, the wireless connection got broken for about a second and then connected straight back to the router with usual WPA2 roaming mode settings. I got the same permission error and roaming mode was back in the settings dialog.

So anything in the Connections tab will cause the error, and the other tabs will just not change?

Yes, connections -> error, other tabs -> changes are accepted in the dialog, but when you reopen it, the old settings are back

Okay, thanks for your help here. Hopefully this can be confirmed and fixed.

Is somebody already working on this? I'm not afraid of using gdb, if you need more data.

I can confirm this bug. My temporary workaround is as follows:

1) open a terminal, issue 'sudo killall NetworkManager'
2) go to System -> Administration -> Network and enter settings to connect to whatever network you need to connect to.

Here's what happened in my case:

I was trying to configure an access point and had reason to give myself a static address, so I clicked the wireless icon and selected "Manual configuration..." and then disabled roaming mode. After I had finished, I went back to the dialog and tried to re-enable roaming mode, only to be given the same error the OP received.

Some info that may be helpful is attached...

My user's perms:

cmpalmer@kant:~$ groups cmpalmer
cmpalmer adm dialout cdrom floppy audio dip video plugdev scanner lpadmin admin netdev powerdev pulse-rt dba

Hi,

I can no longer make _any_ changes to network settings from the gnome interface. I've fallen back to using ifconfig, iwlist and iwconfig to be able to join/switch wireless networks.

If there's anything I can test or any other information I can provide to help track this down, please let me know.

Cheers,
CMP

Hi,

This inexplicably fixed itself this morning. Several reboots had not cleared it before, but now it's gone.

Steps I took that don't seem to explain the resolution:

1) With laptop off, plug in _wired_ connection and utility power.
2) Boot laptop, log in. Wired connection works.
3) Unplug wired connection.
4) Click network connection icon in the panel, select Manual Configuration
5) Authenticate to make changes
6) Reset wireless interface to roaming mode, click OK (this was the step that was previously failing).
7) Select wireless network in range.

Perhaps the original poster can confirm that following the above steps clears his problem?

-CMP

I've retested various sequences of configuration changes and now it always works the first time I open the dialog and starts failing on the second and consequent tries.

Also, login/logout does not fix the issue, I have to reboot the machine. After reboot, I can make one change, after that I always get "Permission denied".

On Hardy A5 I have the same trouble with permission being denied on the second try without reboot. I managed to get two chances one in network settings, and another in manual configuration. I haven't got it to connect yet, Hardy is on a USB so I'm on a gutsy on my main disk where I have wireless where wireless drops out if I use a live disk for something, so I'm used to resetting the connection, but two tries doesn't seem enough..

Anyone still have this issue? It seems to be solved for me after the last update.

I still do have this issue, as of three days from the release day of Hardy. Back from Hibernate and wanting to switch to "static IP" , the Gnome network-admin keep pretending i don't have the permission for it. Same screenshot as the posted ones. I basically can't change anything network-related anymore (except with manual command-line work). Even launching network-admin as root can't help, as the "unlock" button is disabled. Maybe a policykit issue ?

Above is some topics of the Brazilian Ubuntu forum...

this bug is turning a block if working with clients... and i'm forced to change to windows... unhapply...

I can't belive a critical bug like that isn't solved...

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=973410

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=974382

http://linhost.info/2008/11/how-to-set-a-static-ip-on-ubuntu-810/

http://ubuntuforum-br.org/index.php/topic,42160.0.html

http://ubuntuforum-br.org/index.php/topic,42457.0.html

Can not set a static IP address using the live environment 8.04.4 dated 2010-01-21.1. If set using network manager, the system refuses to open any other applications, can not obtain logs because the connection is missing, and can not save to any device even in a tty.

Sorry that bug was left open for such a long time. Charlie, as I said in the other report, your comment is not really related to a bug in network-admin.

Could somebody tell me whether this bug happens in version more recent than Hardy? It's really too late to fix it there anyway, but we could make sure it's fixed for Lucid, which is the only goal we can have now. Thanks!

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!