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Arseni Mourzenko
Asked: 2018-11-11 03:34:00 +0800 CST

How do I disable network manager permanently?

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I'm using Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS. I want to disable network manager on an Ubuntu machine, because (1) I don't need it, (2) I prefer having hardcoded configuration, and (3) network manager regularly causes issues by changing the DHCP configuration.

I tried to follow the official documentation:

Stop network manager

sudo systemctl stop NetworkManager.service

Disable network manager (permanently) to avoid it restarting after a reboot

sudo systemctl disable NetworkManager.service

Despite this, the network manager is back again every time I reboot the machine.

How can I make it go away?

network-manager

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The method depends on desktop environment:

    • For Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS and 20.04 LTS purging network-manager package is safe. You can simply run:

      sudo apt-get purge network-manager

    • For Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and 20.04 LTS with GNOME desktop purging network-manager package will also purge ubuntu-desktop and gnome-control-center (essential part of GNOME desktop). So it is not an option.

      Here you should disable NetworkManager service (as you have already done):

      sudo systemctl stop NetworkManager.service
sudo systemctl disable NetworkManager.service

      and three more services:

      sudo systemctl stop NetworkManager-wait-online.service
sudo systemctl disable NetworkManager-wait-online.service

sudo systemctl stop NetworkManager-dispatcher.service
sudo systemctl disable NetworkManager-dispatcher.service

sudo systemctl stop network-manager.service
sudo systemctl disable network-manager.service

      and then reboot.

    Notes:

    1. You can read more about network configuration with /etc/network/interfaces from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Server Guide.
    2. Modern Ubuntu 18.04 LTS server uses netplan, you can read about it in the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Server Guide.
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  2. Try the mask command:

    sudo systemctl stop NetworkManager.service
sudo systemctl mask NetworkManager.service

    mask NAME...

    Mask one or more units, as specified on the command line. This will link these unit files to /dev/null, making it impossible to start them.
    This is a stronger version of disable, since it prohibits all kinds of activation of the unit, including enablement and manual activation. Use this option with care. This honors the --runtime option to only mask temporarily until the next reboot of the system.
    The --now option may be used to ensure that the units are also stopped. This command expects valid unit names only, it does not accept unit file paths.

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