Ubuntu – Network Manager does not show Edit connections dialogue

Certain sources (notably Elementary Desktop's PPA) have a version of network-manager-gnome which is newer than the one in the canonical maverick repository. A fix has been issued for Natty, but is not in the Maverick repos yet. So Ubuntu sees the newer version in elementary-desktop, uses that instead of the canonical one and, hence, the bug.

The solution is to roll back the version of network-manager-gnome to the 0.8.1+git.20100809t190028.290dc70-0ubuntu3 from 0.8.2+git.20101123t161608.f143e76-0ubuntu1

This can be done from synaptic by searching for network-manager-gnome and then clicking 'force version' in the package menu and selecting the 0.8.1 version.

Here is an Upstart script you can place to /etc/init/reconnect.conf:

start on started network-manager
stop on runlevel [016]

script
  while true; do
    if ifconfig eth0 | grep -q "inet addr:"; then
       # echo "all ok!"
    else
       restart network-manager
    fi
    sleep 5
  done
end script

Upon losing an ip address for eth0 (configure to your interface if its different), it will restart network-manager job and restore connectivity.