KDE Network Manager repeatedly asks for password

Aurora
1

Hey all!

I’ve been using Aurora as my primary OS for a while now, and I love it much more than I ever loved Windows 11. However, I have been noticing one issue with my network manager.

I live in a very rural area, so my wifi tends to be spotty and goes out a couple times an hour for 10-15 secs at most. However, every time it does this, the NM interprets that as an invalid password and asks me to retype it, remaining disconnected until I do so.

This means that if I leave something to download while I’m out, one internet outage and I will have made no progress on my large game/app. I’ve checked the .nmconnection file, and the psk is accurately set to my password. In addition, the connect automatically is set to priority 1, as it is the only network I use on this PC. However, I still notice the issue happening. Does anyone have a fix for this?

Thanks in advance!

2

Would it be possible to setup authentication via a cert instead of password in your router?

That comes to mind as something that might help because the protocols for cert / key exchange are robust with retry logic, etc.

I do not have direct experience myself but had a friend who was setup that way. In order to connect to his network he had to give me a key to use.

Unfortunately, a lot of consumer grade routers do not have support for password-less auth.

But the idea immediately came to mind as soon as I read “rural”.

3

On my system the .nmconnection file looks like this

```
[connection]
id=Gondolin
uuid=e0e67df2-e8ef-4292-be4e-e1b8dbc2557a
type=wifi

[wifi]
mode=infrastructure
ssid=Gondolin

[wifi-security]
key-mgmt=sae
psk=this_is_my_password

[ipv4]
method=auto

[ipv6]
addr-gen-mode=stable-privacy
method=auto

[proxy]
```

No need to enter the password again.

4

The OP’s issue is not persisting the password - it is with the lack of robustness in the protocol to perform auth with a password. This is not the first time I have heard someone in a rural setting struggling with this.

If the laptop is in a toolshed, workshop or barn and is operating close to the technical boundaries of the wifi hardware then using cert instead of password can be an option.

Otherwise, using wifi repeaters or running ethernet or fiber (many times more costly) are other options.

5

I don’t have the same issue but I was having other issues due to the default MAC randomization so I had to turn it off using, maybe toggling this will help?

nmcli connection show

nmcli connection modify “<your connection name” 802-11-wireless.mac-address-randomization never