Bug 439038

Summary: [RFE] Should plasma-nm create system connections when allowed to?
Product: [Plasma] plasmashell Reporter: Andrew Zaborowski <balrogg>
Component: Networks widgetAssignee: Jan Grulich <jgrulich>
Status: RESOLVED NOT A BUG    
Severity: normal CC: balrogg, jgrulich, nate
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: master   
Target Milestone: 1.0   
Platform: Other   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Andrew Zaborowski 2021-06-22 21:34:50 UTC
plasma-nm always sets a new connection's permissions property to the current user, meaning that only that user can use that connection: https://github.com/KDE/plasma-nm/blob/6cac88b61da1277dcb9a801e47f2d69829c68086/libs/handler.cpp#L234

Similarly the editor's default value for the `allUsers` checkbox is false (not really sure if that is ever used.. or is the editor window only ever initialized with values from an existing connection in a way that the defaults never come into play).

Apparently the approach recommended by NM creators is for the client to look at the `org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.settings.modify.system` polkit permission and if that is true for the current user session, default to a system-owned new connection (empty `permissions` property), otherwise default to user-owned.  This was recently stated in https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/-/issues/743#note_952026 (and, as can be seen in that link I'm interested in making this logic work across all clients because when NM is switched to use IWD as the wifi backend -- a recent addition -- some features can only be enabled for system-owned connections.  But, I don't currently have a plasma setup to be able to try making the necessary plasma-nm changes)

For reference I documented what different NM clients do in https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/network-manager-applet/-/merge_requests/98
Comment 1 Jan Grulich 2021-06-25 15:31:53 UTC
Even if we enable new connections for all users, we still default to store secrets into KWallet (obviously for security reasons) so only the current user will have passwords to created connections.

With this scenario I don't see a benefit in changing the default.
Comment 2 Nate Graham 2021-07-29 16:04:35 UTC
Indeed.
Comment 3 Andrew Zaborowski 2021-07-29 19:13:09 UTC
Ok, in that case there's probably nothing that can be done at this time.
Comment 4 Ben Cooksley 2024-12-23 18:26:06 UTC
Bulk transfer as requested in T17796