Fixing ‘netplan apply’ Failed to start NetworkManager.service: Unit NetworkManager.service not found.

Problem:

You’ve configured a wifi or similar (non-ethernet) network in netplan. Your netplan configuration (e.g. in /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml) looks similar to this:

network:
    ethernets:
        enp0s25:
            addresses: []
            dhcp4: true
    wifis:
        wlxc04a0013c4ca:
            renderer: NetworkManager
            match: {}
            dhcp4: true
            access-points:
                MyWifi:
                    password: "mywifipassword"
    version: 2

But when you run

sudo netplan apply

you see an error message like this:

Failed to start NetworkManager.service: Unit NetworkManager.service not found.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/sbin/netplan", line 23, in <module>
    netplan.main()
  File "/usr/share/netplan/netplan/cli/core.py", line 50, in main
    self.run_command()
  File "/usr/share/netplan/netplan/cli/utils.py", line 130, in run_command
    self.func()
  File "/usr/share/netplan/netplan/cli/commands/apply.py", line 41, in run
    self.run_command()
  File "/usr/share/netplan/netplan/cli/utils.py", line 130, in run_command
    self.func()
  File "/usr/share/netplan/netplan/cli/commands/apply.py", line 101, in command_apply
    utils.systemctl_network_manager('start', sync=sync)
  File "/usr/share/netplan/netplan/cli/utils.py", line 68, in systemctl_network_manager
    subprocess.check_call(command)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.6/subprocess.py", line 291, in check_call
    raise CalledProcessError(retcode, cmd)
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['systemctl', 'start', '--no-block', 'NetworkManager.service']' returned non-zero exit status 5.

Solution:

The renderer: NetworkManager line tells netplan to use NetworkManager to connect to this network.

The error message tells you that NetworkManager is not installed on your system.

On Ubuntu and Debian, use

sudo apt install network-manager

to install it. On other distributions, try to install network-manager or a similarly named package using your distribution’s package manager.

After than, run

sudo netplan apply

again.