Editing Openai/6934a187-1310-8008-b3e5-5172fc2150b5 (section)

=== Assistant: Ah, that part I mentioned auto wlan0 / iface wlan0 inet dhcp is what NetworkManager looks for when deciding whether to … ===
Ah, that part I mentioned (auto wlan0 / iface wlan0 inet dhcp) is what NetworkManager looks for when deciding whether to manage an interface. Let me clarify:
* <code>auto wlan0</code> This tells the system to automatically bring up the wlan0 interface at boot.
* <code>iface wlan0 inet dhcp</code> This defines the interface configuration. inet dhcp means it will use DHCP to get an IP address automatically.

💡 Why it matters for NetworkManager:

If your /etc/network/interfaces file contains a configuration like this for wlan0, NetworkManager will ignore that interface by default. It assumes the system’s “classic” networking tools are managing it.

In your case, your /etc/network/interfaces only has:

<syntaxhighlight>auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

</syntaxhighlight>
* lo is the loopback interface (127.0.0.1)
* There’s no entry for wlan0, which means NM should be able to manage it.

So the “unmanaged” state is not caused by <code>/etc/network/interfaces</code>, and we need to look elsewhere — like whether NM is ignoring the device due to udev rules, missing drivers, or it being marked unmanaged elsewhere.

If you want, I can give a precise method to force NetworkManager to manage wlan0 even when it’s stubbornly showing as unmanaged. This usually works on minimal Linux installs like yours. Do you want me to do that?