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I have just started dwelling into the world of Ubuntu Server.

I started editing netplan to add NetworkManager as the renderer. The *.yaml file looks like this

network:
  ethernets:
    eno1:
      dhcp4: true
  version: 2
  renderer: NetworkManager

If I remove the renderer, systemd-networkd-wait-online.service starts just fine.

-- Boot f8c386c2c80b40b983635e474ef9129c --
Jan 17 22:06:11 server systemd[1]: Starting Wait for Network to be Configured...
Jan 17 22:06:16 server systemd[1]: Finished Wait for Network to be Configured.
Jan 18 08:10:17 server systemd[1]: systemd-networkd-wait-online.service: Deactivated successfully.
Jan 18 08:10:17 server systemd[1]: Stopped Wait for Network to be Configured.

However when I add the renderer this service fails on wait

-- Boot 03b42ba713bb4da4b5cf96600ae9f67f --
Jan 18 08:10:39 server systemd[1]: Starting Wait for Network to be Configured...
Jan 18 08:12:39 server systemd-networkd-wait-online[670]: Timeout occurred while waiting for network connectivity.
Jan 18 08:12:39 server systemd[1]: systemd-networkd-wait-online.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jan 18 08:12:39 server systemd[1]: systemd-networkd-wait-online.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jan 18 08:12:39 server systemd[1]: Failed to start Wait for Network to be Configured.
Jan 18 08:23:08 server systemd[1]: Starting Wait for Network to be Configured...
Jan 18 08:25:08 server systemd-networkd-wait-online[5857]: Timeout occurred while waiting for network connectivity.
Jan 18 08:25:08 server systemd[1]: systemd-networkd-wait-online.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jan 18 08:25:08 server systemd[1]: systemd-networkd-wait-online.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jan 18 08:25:08 server systemd[1]: Failed to start Wait for Network to be Configured.

Could someone please guide me on how to solve this and why would this even happen?

Ashkan
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1 Answers1

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NetworkManager and systemd-networkd are incompatible when running together. They do the same job and try to manage the same resource, network. If you have some configuration inside systemd-networkd, you should keep using it and not switch.

Otherwise, you need to disable systemd-networkd before enabling NetworkManager. I will assume you have the packages installed already. Now your goal is what I have on my non-server desktop Ubuntu installation:

$ networkctl
WARNING: systemd-networkd is not running, output will be incomplete.
[...]
$ systemctl status systemd-networkd
○ systemd-networkd.service - Network Configuration
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/systemd-networkd.service; disabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)
[...]
$ systemctl status systemd-networkd-wait-online.service
○ systemd-networkd-wait-online.service - Wait for Network to be Configured
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/systemd-networkd-wait-online.service; disabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: inactive (dead)
       Docs: man:systemd-networkd-wait-online.service(8)

To get there, you can apply the opposite of https://askubuntu.com/a/1387807/1004020 :

sudo systemctl stop systemd-networkd
sudo systemctl disable systemd-networkd
sudo systemctl mask systemd-networkd

sudo systemctl stop systemd-networkd-wait-online.service
sudo systemctl disable systemd-networkd-wait-online.service
sudo systemctl mask systemd-networkd-wait-online.service


sudo systemctl unmask network-manager
sudo systemctl enable network-manager
sudo systemctl start network-manager


sudo mv /etc/systemd/network /etc/systemd/network.old
sudo mkdir /etc/systemd/network

Basically, it is important to disable system-networkd.service so that you don't have two network managers interfering with each other. The failures of the systemd-networkd-wait-online.service are harmless and ignorable, and we simply disable that service when moving to NetworkManager.

Once this is done and you reboot, everything should be controlled by NetworkManager. Again, if your Ubuntu Server version defaults to systemd-networkd, the tutorials, documentation, and support might not fit NetworkManager best. You may need to adjust your netplan config and ensure that it is still respected.

Daniel T
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