[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#879484: Network-Manager should Default to Non-Random MAC Address on WiFi

[Matthew Crews]

Package: network-manager
Version: 1.6.2-3
Severity: wishlist

Dear Maintainer,

I think that Network-Manager default settings should be changed to default to
non-random MAC addresses on WiFi. Even though there are security reasons for
enabling this by default, this results in less "out of the box" support for
WiFi cards on fresh Debian installs and on Live CDs. Other GNU/Linux
distributions have this setting disabled by default.

   * What led up to the situation?

I was using a live CD of Debian 9.2 with Gnome (written to a USB thumb rive),
and my wireless card was not connecting to my network, even though Network-
Manager was detecting both the card and the network. I tried a live CD for
Ubuntu 17.10 Gnome version, and it connected without issue. I investigated, and
saw that Ubuntu's live CD has a setting in
"/etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf" that is not present on Debian's
version:

[device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?

I added this setting to "/etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf" on my Debian
live CD, and after restarting Network Manager my wireless card connected to my
WiFi network without issue.

[device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no



-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.2
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE= (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages network-manager depends on:
ii  adduser                3.115
ii  dbus                   1.10.22-0+deb9u1
ii  init-system-helpers    1.48
ii  libaudit1              1:2.6.7-2
ii  libbluetooth3          5.43-2+deb9u1
ii  libc6                  2.24-11+deb9u1
ii  libglib2.0-0           2.50.3-2
ii  libgnutls30            3.5.8-5+deb9u3
ii  libgudev-1.0-0         230-3
ii  libjansson4            2.9-1
ii  libmm-glib0            1.6.4-1
ii  libndp0                1.6-1+b1
ii  libnewt0.52            0.52.19-1+b1
ii  libnl-3-200            3.2.27-2
ii  libnm0                 1.6.2-3
ii  libpam-systemd         232-25+deb9u1
ii  libpolkit-agent-1-0    0.105-18
ii  libpolkit-gobject-1-0  0.105-18
ii  libreadline7           7.0-3
ii  libselinux1            2.6-3+b3
ii  libsoup2.4-1           2.56.0-2+deb9u1
ii  libsystemd0            232-25+deb9u1
ii  libteamdctl0           1.26-1+b1
ii  libuuid1               2.29.2-1
ii  lsb-base               9.20161125
ii  policykit-1            0.105-18
ii  udev                   232-25+deb9u1
ii  wpasupplicant          2:2.4-1+deb9u1

Versions of packages network-manager recommends:
ii  crda             3.18-1
ii  dnsmasq-base     2.76-5+deb9u1
ii  iptables         1.6.0+snapshot20161117-6
ii  iputils-arping   3:20161105-1
ii  isc-dhcp-client  4.3.5-3
ii  modemmanager     1.6.4-1
ii  ppp              2.4.7-1+4

Versions of packages network-manager suggests:
pn  libteam-utils  <none>

-- no debconf information