Comment 1 for bug 923836

OK, I figured out the problem here.

This is the 802-11-wireless section for the NM-generated connection file:

[802-11-wireless]
ssid=ubuntu-cert-n-wpa
mode=infrastructure
mac-address=00:26:B6:DC:46:73
security=802-11-wireless-security

This is the same section for the connection file generated by create_connection:

[802-11-wireless]
ssid=ubuntu-cert-bg-wpa
mode=infrastructure
mac-address=

security=802-11-wireless-security

The extra blank line leads me to believe our script is inserting a \n (which is apparently part of an empty string) as the MAC address. Now, NetworkManager on Precise seems to dislike the empty mac-address attribute, and so the connection gets ignored. If I remove the mac-address line altogether, the connection becomes visible in nmcli con list and can be enabled with nmcli con up.

So we'd need to either fill in the mac address (if it can be obtained somehow), or skip that line altogether. Bottom line, Network Manager in Precise doesn't like empty attributes :)

Setting as Triaged with importance: Medium.