GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 780421
net-misc/networkmanager-1.4.4-r1 - Cannot save connection due to error: Invalid setting Wi-Fi: invalid MAC address for cloned MAC (permanent)
Last modified: 2017-03-23 15:46:34 UTC
Hi, I am on Gentoo Linux with net-misc/networkmanager-1.4.4-r1. I cannot "Save" in nm-connection-editor my settings because: 1. nm-connection-editor internal checks silently fail (reporting error on STDERR but not through GUI) 2. after realizing where to look for error messages I realized that although I did not modify the item, nm-connection-editor is not happy with value "permanent" as reported in GUI. However, the error message includes round brackets around teh work permanent. A workaround is to delete the "permanent" value in GUI and then "Save" button is working. But if I again want to "Edit" my WiFi connection, I *again* have to delete the word "permenant" from the GUI. Seems this was already discussed in bug #708820#c30 as unfixed. I also see it reported in https://forum.manjaro.org/t/cannot-edit-network-connections/10244 . # cat /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/00-cloned-mac-address-preserve.conf cat: /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/00-cloned-mac-address-preserve.conf: No such file or directory # # ls -latr /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d ls: cannot access '/etc/NetworkManager/conf.d': No such file or directory #
# nm-connection-editor Gtk-Message: GtkDialog mapped without a transient parent. This is discouraged. ** Message: Cannot save connection due to error: Editor initializing... ** Message: Cannot save connection due to error: Invalid setting Wi-Fi: invalid MAC address for cloned MAC (permanent) (nm-connection-editor:13280): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_box_gadget_distribute: assertion 'size >= 0' failed in GtkNotebook (nm-connection-editor:13280): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_box_gadget_distribute: assertion 'size >= 0' failed in GtkNotebook ** Message: Cannot save connection due to error: Editor initializing... ** Message: Cannot save connection due to error: Invalid setting Wi-Fi: invalid MAC address for cloned MAC (permanent) (nm-connection-editor:13280): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_box_gadget_distribute: assertion 'size >= 0' failed in GtkNotebook (nm-connection-editor:13280): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_box_gadget_distribute: assertion 'size >= 0' failed in GtkNotebook ** Message: Cannot save connection due to error: Editor initializing... ** Message: Cannot save connection due to error: Invalid setting Wi-Fi: invalid MAC address for cloned MAC (permanent) (nm-connection-editor:13280): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_box_gadget_distribute: assertion 'size >= 0' failed in GtkNotebook (nm-connection-editor:13280): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_box_gadget_distribute: assertion 'size >= 0' failed in GtkNotebook ** Message: Cannot save connection due to error: Invalid setting Wi-Fi Security: invalid EAP-PEAP CA certificate: unspecified error validating eap-method file ** Message: Connection validates and can be saved # Ad you can see, after I removed the offending value "permanent" then nm-connection-editor reported "Message: Connection validates and can be saved" and allowed me to save the modified settings.
> 1. nm-connection-editor internal checks silently fail (reporting error on > STDERR but not through GUI) The Save button has a tooltip hint that shows the same message. > # cat /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/ NetworkManager's configuration is quite unrelated to the connections. nm-connection-editor only edits the connection at hand. The connection does not include any default-values that may be defined in NetworkManager.conf. One problem is that NM/libnm gained a new feature of setting wifi.cloned-mac-address=permanent. That is supported by right away by nmcli and nmtui. nm-connection-editor for a while did not support that, so you were unable to create/save such configurations. That feature has been added in the meantime ( https://git.gnome.org/browse/network-manager-applet/commit/?id=85b6b659a140a59c3df787062e089a0b4e2a547d ) The reason why the "permanent" setting keeps reappearing is probably due to the fixed libnm bug: https://cgit.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/commit/?id=7f63c875f973f3b7cc136130c61348b36e280ab6 I am closing this as fixed. If you still experience issues with the mentioned patches, please reopen. Thanks
Thank you for a quick answer. Well, which patch could be backported to 1.4.4 tree in Gentoo and actually other distros? Upgrade to 1.6 series will not happen that soon and per Google multiple users are hitting the same issue on otehr Linux distributions. Second, I am not certain whether you eventually wanted to say that maybe the incompatibility was brought in via a Gentoo patch -r1: https://cgit.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/tree/net-misc/networkmanager and especially see the files/ subdirectory. I will be happy then to ping Gentoo devs to appoly the patches to fix this in 1.4.4-r2. ;-) Or make a pull request to https://cgit.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/ yourself. ;)
the libnm fix 7f63c875f973f3b7cc136130c61348b36e280ab6 is already backported to nm-1-4: https://cgit.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/commit/?id=44ab1914a40cf8e72c92c9499ac0caaea3f4ff0c. The applet change is a new feature, it's not supported to set a permanent MAC address via nm-connection-editor before 1.4.4. Anyway, the change 85b6b659a140a59c3df787062e089a0b4e2a547d is part of 1.4.4 release of applet. So, you should have it already. I am not familiar with gentoo build, but seems you don't end up with nm-applet release >= 1.4.4.
Bingo, indeed I have gnome-extra/nm-applet-1.4.2 only. I report report to Gentoo. However, please make sure your release notes mention that networkmanagwr-1.4.4 requires >=1.4.4 version of nm-applet. Either somebody overlooked that or it is not in say Release notes, configure checks, whatever.
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=613646
NetworkManager and libnm is backward compatible and doesn't require any minimal version of applet. The versions must be: nm-applet <= libnm <= NetworkManager New features are not available then, but that doesn't mean an update of the applet is strictly required. Also, the version numbers of nm-applet don't have to equal the version numbers of NetworkManager/libnm. - The 3rd version number in 1.4.>>4<< has no relation to the NetworkManager version number. It's just an incremental number of fixes for the 1.4 branch. Such minor releases of NetworkManager and applet are not in sync and the 3rd version number has no relation between each other. - The 2nd version number in 1.>>4<<.4 also is not required to match the version number of NetworkManager. It is perfectly fine to run NM-1.6.0 with applet 1.4.2 (in fact, applet will skip version 1.6 entirely and no applet 1.6.0 exists). Only, the 2nd version number of the applet must not be larger then the corresponding NetworkManager version number. E.g. NM-1.2.0 won't work with applet 1.4.0. But sure. It's a good idea to update the applet!!!