Comment 2 for bug 923836

OK, so it looks like create-connection was doing the right thing by trying to fetch the HWADDR field using this command:

nmcli -f GENERAL dev list | grep 802-11-wireless -A 2 | awk '/HWADDR/ {print $2}'

on Oneiric (sans the awk bit) it responds:

GENERAL.TYPE: 802-11-wireless
GENERAL.DRIVER: brcmsmac
GENERAL.HWADDR: 00:1B:B1:4C:90:F4

Note the HWADDR field.

However, on Precise it says:

GENERAL.TYPE: 802-11-wireless
GENERAL.VENDOR: Atheros Communications Inc.
GENERAL.PRODUCT: AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express)

Thus no HWADDR and the invalid field is generated :( It looks like the HWADDR line is a bit further down in the output. So ways to fix this:

1- change -A 2 to -A 4. This feels a bit brittle and if the ordering of fields changes again, we will experience the same problem.

2- Specify a device for which to obtain data, thus eliminating the possibility of multiple HWADDR fields (which I guess is why -A is being used to control the grep context). However this requires knowing the interface name. Something like this works :

nmcli -f GENERAL dev list iface wlan0 | awk '/HWADDR/ {print $2}'

However one simple fix suggested by cyphermox is that the mac-address field can be blank and things appear to work well. So I'll propose a "failsafe" where, if the MAC address is blank, that line won't get output to the config file.