Ubuntu users frustrated by the inability to connect to a new password-protected Wi-Fi network at the login screen will be pleased to know a fix is rolling out.
This particular bug affects users of both Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and Ubuntu 24.10. When trying to join a wireless network at the login screen (GDM) which requires a password, the password input prompt never appears and the connection fails.
Why does—soon to be ‘did’—connecting to a wifi network at the Ubuntu login screen fail?
Canonical software engineer (and the original bug reporter) Bartosz Woronicz explains:
"The log-in screen [in Ubuntu] is implemented by running GNOME Shell in the "greeter" mode. When requesting to connect to a new wifi network, gnome-shell tries to communicate with the org.freedesktop.secrets service to check whether the password for this network is already known, but that fails when running in "greeter" mode because gnome-keyring is registered on one dbus address while gnome-shell only has access to a dedicated/isolated dbus bus. When this fails, gnome-shell aborts the connection attempt"
Since the login screen isn’t “logged in” as a user, it can’t store ‘secrets’ (i.e., passwords), so querying it to see if known a password is moot.
Canonical’s engineers proposed a fix (i.e., always ask the user to enter a wi-fi password for new connections initiated in ‘greeter’ mode). The solution was accepted upstream and, after a bit of review, shipped as part of the GNOME 48 release.
Ubuntu doesn’t back-port new GNOME versions to existing stable releases, but it often back-ports patches, fixes, and other minor buffs – as it’s done here.
The fix is in the gnome-shell 46.0-0ubuntu6~24.04.8 update on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, and gnome-shell 47.0-2ubuntu3.24.10.1 on Ubuntu 24.10.
Both package updates started rolling out as a standard software update this week, so if you this bug has bugged you, look out for them!