How to prevent Network Manager from auto creating network connection profiles with "available to everyone" by default

Posted by airtonix on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by airtonix
Published on 2012-03-28T02:01:55Z Indexed on 2012/03/28 5:42 UTC
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We have several laptops at work which use Ubuntu 11.10 64bit.

I have our Wifi Access Point requiring WPA2-EAP Authentication (backed by a LDAP server).

I have the staff using these laptops when doing presentations by using the Guest Account.

So by default when you have a wifi card, network manager will display available Wireless Access Points.

So the logical course of action for a Novice(tm) user is to single left click the easy to use option in the Network Manager drop down list... At this point the Staff Member (who is logged in with the guest account) expects to just be able to connect and enter any authentication details if required.

But because they are using the Guest account, they won't ever have admin permissions (nor do I want them to), and so PolKit kicks in with a request for admin authorisation.

I solved this part by modifying the PolKit permissions required to allow all users to create System Network Connections...

However, because these Staff members are logging onto the Wifi Access Point with Ldap Credentials and because the Network Manager is now saving those credentials as a System Connection, their password is available for the next guest user session (because system connection profiles are stored in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections.d/* ).

It creates system connections by default because "Available to all users" is ticked by default when you quickly connect to a new wifi access point.

I want Network Manager to not tick this by default. This way I can revert the changes I made to Polkit and users network connection profiles will be purged when they log out.

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