This morning I had an issue where the standard Networking Manager in Ubuntu 11.04 failed to pick up a wired internet connection.

ubuntu 11.10 wired network device not managed

I’d been playing around with the interfaces file in /etc/network/interfaces, changing the settings for the ethernet and the wireless networks; but unfortunately neither helped.

After some Googling I found out that there is also another configuration file for the Network Manager in Ubuntu that needs some changing. That is fixed like this:


sudo vim /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf


Changing from managed=false to managed=true and then restarting the network manager service worked a treat and now the Ethernet is now properly connected

Finish up with a restart of the network manager and then you’re good.


sudo service network-manager restart