NetworkManager broken after upgrade to Kubuntu Saucy

Question

I had Kubuntu 13.04 on my ThinkPad X220, and I upgraded to 13.10 and I am not able to connect to a wired or wireless connection. The new network tray icon does not show any entries at all.

In the menu of the tray icon, there is an error saying:

Require NetworkManager 0.9.8, found .

I then tried the following:

nmcli con

** (process:3695): WARNING **: Could not initialize NMClient /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager: Rejected send message, 3 matched rules; type="method_call", sender=":1.64" (uid=1000 pid=3695 comm="nmcli con ") interface="org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" member="GetAll" error name="(unset)" requested_reply="0" destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager" (uid=0 pid=1116 comm="NetworkManager ")
Error: nmcli (0.9.8.0) and NetworkManager (unknown) versions don't match. Force execution using --nocheck, but the results are unpredictable.

nmcli dev

** (process:3700): WARNING **: Could not initialize NMClient /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager: Rejected send message, 3 matched rules; type="method_call", sender=":1.65" (uid=1000 pid=3700 comm="nmcli dev ") interface="org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" member="GetAll" error name="(unset)" requested_reply="0" destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager" (uid=0 pid=1116 comm="NetworkManager ")
Error: nmcli (0.9.8.0) and NetworkManager (unknown) versions don't match. Force execution using --nocheck, but the results are unpredictable.

nm-tool

** (process:3705): WARNING **: Could not initialize NMClient /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager: Rejected send message, 3 matched rules; type="method_call", sender=":1.66" (uid=1000 pid=3705 comm="nm-tool ") interface="org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" member="GetAll" error name="(unset)" requested_reply="0" destination="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager" (uid=0 pid=1116 comm="NetworkManager ")

NetworkManager Tool

State: unknown


** (process:3705): WARNING **: error: could not connect to NetworkManager

Running those as root works, however. I was also able to run nmcli con up id DHCP which got my DHCP connection working and giving me internet access. That did not work using a Wifi connection though, and I do need those.

How can I get networking back to work without a reinstall?

Answer 1

After seeing your other problems, I'm pretty sure the problem is with policykit or consolekit.

make sure you have policykit-1, policykit-desktop-privileges, polkit-kde-1 and consolekit installed, by running:

sudo apt install policykit-1 policykit-desktop-privileges polkit-kde-1 consolekit 

if they are installed try reconfiguring them

sudo dpkg-reconfigure policykit-1 policykit-desktop-privileges consolekit polkit-kde-1

Answer 2

If the root user can do something that you can't, it hints towards an issue with the policykit privileges.

Open Terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run

sudo service network-manager status //Note the process-id (995 in your case as per the comment)
sudo service network-manager stop
sudo service network-manager status //See if it's still running; if not, enter next command
sudo dpkg-reconfigure policykit-1 policykit-desktop-privileges consolekit polkit-kde-1

to reconfigure them.

Then run

sudo service network-manager restart

and see if it's working now.

As for the WLAN/WiFi not working even as root (if the issue is still unresolved), please update the Q with the WLAN NIC name. The drivers may be faulty and you may require alternate ones.