How to set up NetworkManager for use on school and other WPA2-Enterprise Networks using only systemctl, and the text editor of your choice.

Ever since moving off of ubuntu, network setup has been a pain, so here's a how-to and skeleton for a config file for WPA2 Enterprise Networks. This method has been tested on two different university networks and worked for both.

If you don't have NetworkManager installed, either get it from your package manager, or transfer the source from a computer that has network access and go here for instructions on how to install it.

First, generate a UUID with uuidgen. Then copy the base config from this repository into /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/[CONNECTION-NAME] and edit in the connection id with your favorite text editor. Set uuid to the one you generated earlier, and change the SSID to that of the access point you are trying to connect to. Put in your user id (usually given to you by the school), and the password to connect with in their appropriate spots.

If you know that your network has different authentication methods, change those here as well.

Write and save the file, then run

chown root /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/[CONNECTION-NAME] && \
chmod 600 /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/[CONNECTION-NAME]

Finally you must restart the NetworkManager service with sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager. And with that you should have a functioning wifi connection on WPA2-Enterprise!