Fixing Wireless After Crash in Lucid

In Ubuntu Lucid, there is apparently an infrequent problem with NetworkManager not coming back properly when waking up a laptop from sleep/hibernate. Even though it seemed like the wireless driver was somehow no longer working, it was actually due to an inconsistent state being saved/restored. No amount of stopping/restarting services or reloading modules helped, since the config claimed to be working as expected.

The basic fix:

  1. Open this file in your favourite text editor:
    /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state
  2. Changing The NewrokingEnabled line to be:

    NetworkingEnabled=true
  3. Restart networkmanager with:

    sudo service network-manager restart

It would be very helpful if KNetworkManager provided a GUI way to detect/fix this – I may have a go at adding it.

The full bug report is here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/555571