[SOLVED] Manually Activating Network Connection

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Running Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) and FreedomBox version 20.15. FreedomBox is up to date. I am not a GNU/Linux expert and would like to double check when changing FreedomBox system settings manually.

Problem: I was unable to activate a network connection. When trying to activate the connection using nmtui, I got this error:

Could not activate connection: Connection is not available on device ens5 because device is strictly unmanaged

Solution: A quick search led me to this forum response. There it is recommended to change /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf so that NetworkManager manages interfaces that appear in /etc/network/interfaces. This fixed the issue for me.

Question: Is this change safe? Also, should this not be done automatically during set up?

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I see that this issue was already discussed in the manual (14.2 “Tips and Troubleshooting”):

Leaving here in case others have this issue.

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Automatically setting all interfaces might lead to disconnection of the machine from the network if the default (DHCP) does not work for that network. When people install FreedomBox using ‘apt install freeedombox’ over a remote shell, this could result in loss of that connection and need for physical access to the machine. If done by the user of the machine, and if they configure the network connection correctly before switch, then it is safe.

All FreedomBox images, of course, start with a prisitine state and don’t face this problem.