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Setup WiFi with NetworkManager on Ubuntu Server

Reasoning

If you initially create a headless Ubuntu server, you will be needing to use Netplan

  • Problem is, if you want to use NetworkManager, something with Netplan seems to conflict with NetworkManager's connection attempts and will not save the connection when session is terminated
  • This means you will need to reconnect every time you lose connection as if you forgot the connection (not sure why this is, but is quite annoying)

Instructions

Put the below into /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml then you should be able to reconnect to a dropped WiFi without issues:

network:
  version: 2
  renderer: NetworkManager
  wifis:
    wlp3s0:
      dhcp4: true
      access-points:
        "yourssid":
          password: "yourwifipassword"

Then run the following commands to apply the settings:

sudo netplan generate

sudo netplan apply

Netplan Method

If you want to keep using Netplan but still having issues, you may need to ensure you have wpasupplicant installed, as this has been an issue in the past