HOWTO: Give Network Manager Sufficient Privileges

Nm-applet is easily one of the most flexible network connection tools available under modern Linux distributions today. Because of this it is my network manager of choice. The only issue is that under a good deal of modern window managers (such as E17) nm-applet doesn't let your normal user connect to new networks without a bit of additional configuration.

The following is how to get around the message:

Failed to add new connection: (32) Insufficient privileges.

From the 0.9.x revision of the network manager.

It is a fairly simple fix that simply involves creating a configuration file. Crack open your terminal emulator of choice and run:

sudo nano /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.pkla

For the contents of this file simply paste this and then save+close the file.

Note if your user will need to be part of the netdev group for that code to function (if you don't have a netdev group, any group your user is a part of will work). To check the groups your current user is in simply run groups myusername in terminal (replace myusername with the name of your user clearly).

~Jeff Hoogland