Network Manager only works for one user

[kseise]

I have a laptop with two users. The first user created has permission to change wireless networks with nm-applet. The second user is constantly prompted for their sudo password. The second user can not change networks at all. is there a group permission which needs to be set or something?

[non-portable]

There's something weird going on with NetworkManager and the new policykit. For me at least, I require system level network manager config, not user level. So my connections are stored in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/.

You could try adding the user to the group netdev and logging in again. If that doesn't work, try creating a file

/etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/00-local-networkmanager.pkla

and filling it with

[Adding or changing system-wide NetworkManager connections]
Identity=unix-group:netdev
Action=org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.settings.modify.system
ResultAny=no
ResultInactive=no
ResultActive=yes

You could use 'Identity=unix-user:jane' in place of 'Identity=unix-group:netdev'. Then you need to restart policykit and maybe log in again or reboot.

That seems to get past some of the issues for me but it's a bit of a kludge.

There's an interesting page here:

http://blog.mmassonnet.info/2011/05/cha ... -user.html

[kseise]

Thanks, I tried adding her to the netdev group, but that didn't work. I will try the hack you mentioned, but I am curious to know if the updates to policykit will fix this when it roles out or if i am making a change I might regret in the future.

[non-portable]

That's a good question and not an easy one to answer. In my opinion, adding config is probably less nasty than looking for other repositories with higher versions or a multitude of other things you could do. Even if you forget about that config, it might not be problematic because the config is additive in nature but these things bite you in the ass when you are not looking.

One thing you could check is whether your connections are set up as system level (available to all users) and whether you can delete them, make user level config and whether that works for both of you but it's a bit more faffing around.