[Networkmanager] Network Manager connection profile creation fails when /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections is a symbolically linked.

[Greg Oliver]

On Wed, Aug 2, 2023 at 1:54 AM manjunatha srinivasan <
manjunathan.n at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi
>
> Network Manager doesn't allow creation of any network connection profile
> for interface using symbolic link instead of folder. I am in need of having
> /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections as symbolic link to
> /tmp/system-connections.  Please let me know any solution for this and also
> let me know the more root cause of this error.
>
> root at test:/etc# ls -lt /etc/NetworkManager/
> total 20
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   32 Aug  1 17:15 system-connections ->
> /tmp/system-connections/
> drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Aug  1 16:33 dispatcher.d
> -rw-r-xr-x 1 root root  148 Mar  7  2022 NetworkManager.conf
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar  7  2022 conf.d
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar  7  2022 dnsmasq-shared.d
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar  7  2022 dnsmasq.d
> root at fxr90:/etc# ls -lt /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 32 Aug  1 17:15
> /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections -> /tmp/system-connections/
> root at test:/etc# nmcli con add con-name  my-eth0 type ethernet ifname eth0
> ipv4.method auto  ipv6.method auto  connection.autoconnect-priority 1
> ipv4.dhcp-timeout 10 ipv6.ra-timeout 10
> Error: Failed to add 'my-eth0' connection: failure adding connection:
> settings plugin does not support adding connections
>
> Thanks
> Manjunatha Srinivasan N
>

Possibly selinux -

ls -lZ /tmp/system-connections

should be:
system_u:object_r:NetworkManager_etc_rw_t:s0

You may need to relabel the symlink - I do this often to overcome selinux
after symlinking:

semanage fcontext -a -t NetworkManager_etc_rw_t
"/tmp/system-connections(/.*)?"
restorecon -Rv /tmp/system-connections

Since /tmp is volatile, you will more than likely need to provide a way to
do this @ each boot (if this is even the problem)..  I have not tried your
approach.  I just know selinux and symlinks require a little finesse.
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