I posted a question a little while ago about the network icon no longer showing in the indicator applet after upgrading to maverick. After reading this post, I looked in synaptic to see if I was missing any of the indicators, and it showed that indicator-network wasn't installed, so I installed it. Restarted my computer, and now all my network devices are gone.
I removed the indicator applet from the panel, but still have AWN running, so I looked at the network icon there. When I click on it, instead of showing me all my wireless network options, all it shows is "No network devices available" (greyed out), and "VPN connections" with an available submenu of "Configure VPN".
When I open the Network Connections dialog through the System Preferences menu, it shows a list of connections accessed in the past, including the wireless network I want to be connected to (and which was connected as of 8 minutes ago.)
What did I do? As far as I know all I did was install an indicator icon, so why did it completely delete my network stuff? And more importantly, how can I get it back?
indicator-network installs Connection Manager, which replaces network-manager.
This page on the wiki explains how to make them coexist by switching between them, or you can just remove connman.