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devrate

Member

Registered: 2019-09-14

Posts: 14  

[SOLVED] Removing/purging Network Manager

What are the inconveniences if I remove/purge Network Manager?

ralph.ronnquist

Administrator

From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS

Registered: 2016-11-30

Posts: 1,626  

Re: [SOLVED] Removing/purging Network Manager

I have no idea.
I don't use it;
I just use plain ifupdown configurations, plus wpagui on some hosts.
I think of that as easy and straight-forward.
In particular, it's well documented.

Altoid

Member

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 1,985  

Re: [SOLVED] Removing/purging Network Manager

Hello:

... use plain ifupdown configurations ...
... easy and straight-forward.
.. well documented.

+1
For me it was a huge step forward.

Best,

A.

steve_v

Member

Registered: 2018-01-11

Posts: 670  

Re: [SOLVED] Removing/purging Network Manager

What are the inconveniences if I remove/purge Network Manager?

Uhh, needing to configure networking yourself? Fairly obvious, no?
Aside from that, likely a lack of GUI network configuration / tray widgets / whatever... Unless you install something else that provides those, of which there are several. None of them have the extensive feature set creep networkmanager does though.

NM is useful for systems that use a variety of transient networks, e.g. wifi, cell modem, bridges, tunnels, vpns etc. where the user wants a unified GUI that can configure and switch between those on-the-fly. Essentially, It's designed for coffee-shop-warriors with laptops.

NM is downright aggravating if manual network configuration is common, or a single, fixed, reliable connection is required at boot. e.g. the system has NFS mounts or the user regularly does 'ip whatever' or 'ifconfig whatever' to connect with static addresses or manual routing.

NM is completely pointless for servers or workstations that have fixed wired networking or rarely change connections.

Vague question -> vague answers.

Last edited by steve_v (2026-03-09 11:26:00)

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devrate

Member

Registered: 2019-09-14

Posts: 14  

Re: [SOLVED] Removing/purging Network Manager

Here is the context:

I have a desktop machine with wired connection to a router.  I am setting up a wifi network with another router not connected to the internet. 

When I use the Network Manager via the status tray icon to connect to the wifi network, it changes resolv.conf to point to the non-internet wifi router, and adds a default route pointing to this router.   So each time I connect to the non-internet wifi, I have to fix resolv.conf and route table manually.

So I am looking for an alternative(s) to Network Manager to manage wifi connection.   Can you all help me out with suggestions/recommendations?

Thanks.

Last edited by devrate (2026-03-09 17:49:59)

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,865  

Re: [SOLVED] Removing/purging Network Manager

Set up both wired and wireless in /etc/network/interfaces.

Network Configuration Guide
https://www.devuan.org/os/documentation … figuration

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,416  

Re: [SOLVED] Removing/purging Network Manager

You either define everything in /etc/network/interfaces or you exclusively use NM for both. As you have seen a mix won't work.

devrate

Member

Registered: 2019-09-14

Posts: 14  

Re: [SOLVED] Removing/purging Network Manager

My fault.   I was connecting to wifi asking for dhcp, of course it will assign dns server and gateway (the port's default route).   Changed the connection type to static  ip, and now it don't mess with the resolv.conf.

Thanks all for the info and advices.

BTW:  I installed wpa_gui and it reports that it "could not get status from wpa_supplicant."   Are the operations of wpa_gui and network manager mutually exclusive?

rations

Member

Registered: 2025-11-06

Posts: 53  

Re: [SOLVED] Removing/purging Network Manager

For wpa_gui I had to do this in /etc/network/interfaces

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
             wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

then sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

ctrl_interface=DIR=/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
p2p_disabled=1

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ralph.ronnquist

Administrator

From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS

Registered: 2016-11-30

Posts: 1,626  

Re: [SOLVED] Removing/purging Network Manager

Actually the man page advice is to use two iface snippets in /etc/network/interfaces

iface wlan0 inet manual
    wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

iface default inet dhcp

The first snippet is for declaring the conf file to be used, and the second is the one wpa_action will use when setting up an access point link. (using ifup wlan0=default)

In that way you can also define additional, different handlings of different setups with different identities.