Hi,

When I setup the system, I had no problems going into System-Administration-Network and hitting UNLOCK and typing password.
Now it is grayed out and UNLOCK tab does not respond.

My username does belong to the root group.

Has anyone seen this happen before? What could be the cause? Is it possible I changed permissions to folder or something by mistake?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Can't login as root in Ubuntu, can I change the newtork settings any other way?

If you have enabled the root account in Ubuntu, remember, this is not recommended:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo
My username does not belong to the root group. I use sudo as recommended. For reference, my username belongs to these groups:
Type the command groups to see what groups you are a member of.
It is certainly possible that you have changed permissions to system files and directories, especially if you have been running as the root user.
Are you able to run commands with sudo? For example:
If you are unable to run commands with sudo, see this:
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/fixsudo
At this point, you may be better off disabling the root account as described here:
http://www.debianadmin.com/enable-an...-password.html

Hi,

Yes, I am able to run apt-get command. I don't use the terminal as user root. I just added my username to the root group so that I don't have problems running jobs that show root as owner. I don't know if this is a best practice or not, but until now, I haven't had any issues.

^ well that means you have access to what root allows rea/write/execute for the group (the owner has there own set of permissions just like ,you mite already know, the world has their own set of permissions)

What are the permissions of: /etc/network/interfaces file? Run the command:
to list them. For reference, they should be: If you can't manage to edit network settings any other way, you can edit that file to change network settings. Be sure to back it up first.
You could also try installing wicd to manage your network. This will remove network manager.
You could also try reinstalling network manager and perhaps it will set the permissions right.
I would recommend removing your username from the root group. This is a security risk. As you have discovered, this can lead to problems.

Hi All,

Yes,my permissions on /etc/network/interfaces was the same has yours.
When I tried to open the network via the terminal "network-admin", I received an error msg

Quote:

Polkit-read-auth helper: needs to be setgid polkituser

I have found a solution for my problem. It worked for me to do a reinstall of first policykit

"apt-get install --reinstall policykit" and then do the same for hal,
"apt-get install --reinstall hal"

^for future reference those rw-'s should be read as
3 groups of rwx's
in this case: rw- means the owner has read write but not execute.
r-- means that the group has read but not write or execute.
r-- means that the world has read but not write or execute.
the owner is root and the group is root.
look at the man pages for chown, chgrp, chmod.