NetworkManager

NetworkManager is the standard Linux network configuration tool suite. NetworkManager supports both wireless daemons i.e iwd and wpa_supplicant. Using both may lead to conflicts.

Installation

# apk add networkmanager

Note: Networkmanager needs to have udev to be setup properly. Otherwise your network devices can be listed as (strictly-)unmanaged. The busybox implementation mdev is not sufficient. You can set up proper udev with:

# setup-devd udev

There are multiple interfaces available for NetworkManager:

TUI: networkmanager-tui, a curses-based interface (run nmtui)
Command line: networkmanager-cli (run nmcli)
GUI: plasma-nm for Plasma integration and applet
GUI: network-manager-applet for a GTK system tray applet

For the list of all NetworkManager packages refer networkmanager-*

You will need to install an additional package if you want NetworkManager to connect to wifi:

# apk add networkmanager-wifi

After installation start NetworkManager:

# rc-service networkmanager start

Then set it to autostart the service on boot:

# rc-update add networkmanager default

Also your user needs to be in the plugdev group:

# adduser <YourUsername> plugdev

Note: you will need to log out for the new group to take effect

Wired networks

If wired networks do not appear or you get an error message like "Could not activate connection: Connection 'Ethernet connection 1' is not available on device eth0 because device is strictly unmanaged", add the following to /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf:

Contents of /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf

[ifupdown]
managed=true

Wireless networks

wpa_supplicant backend

Refer the sections wpa supplicant and Automatic Configuration on System Boot. wpa_supplicant configuration might not be required, if it isn't it may be a good idea to have it setup just as a fallback.

Now open /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf in a text editor and change it to something like this:

Contents of /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf

[main] 
dhcp=internal
plugins=ifupdown,keyfile

[ifupdown]
managed=true

[device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=yes
wifi.backend=wpa_supplicant

Note: if these options dont work on your system you can change them as necessary.

Now you need to stop conflicting services:

# rc-service networking stop

# rc-service wpa_supplicant stop

Now restart NetworkManager:

# rc-service networkmanager restart

Now connect to a network using one of the interfaces mentioned in Installation

If that connects and stays connected with no issues enable the networkmanager service and disable the networking and wpa_supplicant boot services:

# rc-update add networkmanager

# rc-update del networking boot

# rc-update del wpa_supplicant boot

iwd backend

NetworkManager supports wireless networks through iwd, however, consider existing issues before using it. After installation, enable the server and restart NetworkManager:

rc-service iwd start
rc-service networkmanager restart

To use iwd though, you've have to edit NetworkManager's configuration because it still defaults to wpa_supplicant instead. Add the following to /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf:

[device]
wifi.backend=iwd

VPN support

Since version 1.16, NetworkManager has support for Wireguard[1].

Support for other VPN types is provided by plugins. They are provided in the following packages:

networkmanager-openvpn for OpenVPN

Troubleshooting

nm-applet not authorized to control networking

You can enable all users to edit connections without adding polkit. First, make the conf.d directory for networkmanager:

# mkdir -p /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d

Then, add following content to /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/any-user.conf:

[main]
auth-polkit=false

Finally, restart networkmanager:

# rc-service networkmanager restart

Todo: (KDE Plasma Desktop) find out if it is possible to prevent requesting the password for KDE Wallet on login

Todo: (KDE Plasma Desktop) for autoconnect to wifi network on start, it appears that the "all users may connect to this network" option must be selected in settings, as root is not a choice to allow. There are likely better workarounds