Not authorized to control networking

I have Ubuntu 13.04 Gnome with Mate.

If I click on the networking icon on the top tool bar and try to do something like add a never before used Wifi or simply click Hardwire Connection 1 when I have changed to a new network, I get 'Connection activation failed. (32) Not authorized to control networking.'

My presumption is that I have lacking some group attribute for my user or else there is some security setting.

I can make the changes if I log in as root instead of myself.

What must be tweaked to allow my user name the privileges to handle this?

3 Answers

To fix this problem, it should be enough to add your user to the network or netdev group. To do it, you can use the GUI in the settings menu (that cog in the top right), or just type something like this in a terminal:

sudo usermod -G netdev -a yourusername

Remember to logout/login again to update your user privileges.

9

In my case, I did not have the privileges. So, either log in as root if using the GUI, or use sudo when using terminal.

It has been a while, but I ran into this problem while updating to 14.04. In my case the problem was with the lxdm display manager. Try switching your display managers by running

sudo dpkg-reconfigure lxdm

If you don't have other manager install try something like GDM:

sudo apt-get install gdm

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