Network Manager not working when installing ubuntu-desktop on a Ubuntu 18.04 Server installation

Question

I have installed a Ubuntu 18.04 Server to be able to install on a RAID, followed by a ubuntu-desktop install. The problem is that the Network Manager does not work now, it does not allow me to see or modify any of the network configuration. The network connection is displayed with the name "Wired Unmanaged". Maybe the server distro uses another system to configure the network that is not supported by NetworkManager? How can I move to a standard Desktop configuration of the network?

Solution 1

Are you aware that Ubuntu 18.04 introduced Netplan?

If you want to use network manager my understanding is you need to edit the netplan configuration file in /etc/netplan.

Specifically to enable network manager your /etc/netplan would look like this:

network:
  version: 2
  renderer: NetworkManager

You then need to run

netplan generate
netplan apply

After that, network manager should work as you expect.

Solution 2

The other answer fixed my problem. I'm running VmWare workstation pro 14.1.2

This is what I did to fix "wired unmanaged" in Ubuntu Server 18.04

sudo nano /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml

add under network

network:
  version: 2
  renderer: NetworkManager

then perform:

sudo netplan generate
sudo netplan apply

Comments

[chili555]

I would also probably rename the file to /etc/netplan/01-network-manager-all.yaml or else remove the old file and write the new file.

[Justin Sane]

The file name has to begin with a number or it would not work for me. I.e. if I named the file foo.yaml, nm would not list my connections. I renamed it to 01-foo.yaml and it works fine now...