Arch Linux

Description:
I tried to create an ad hoc network for sharing the internet connection using the NetworkManger "nm-applet" GUI. I ran into two issues, which prevented the configuration to work out-of-the-box in Arch Linux. When the ad hoc network had been created in NetworkManager, I tried to "connect" to the ad hoc network in nm-applet in order to activate the network. At this point NetworkManager failed to connect without any useful GUI error message.

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Issue 1:
Looking at the NetworkManager logs with journalctl revealed the following error message:

Dispatcher failed: (32) Unit dbus-org.freedesktop.nm-dispatcher.service failed to load: No such file or directory.

I identified this commit from upstream, where the dispatcher gets it own service:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/commit/?id=06a415d9ea2d3155ffa7bdfed999191f31f1f9ef

This service isn't enabled in Arch Linux so running the following two commands solved issue 1:
systemctl enable NetworkManager-dispatcher.service
systemctl start NetworkManager-dispatcher.service

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Solution to issue 1: Enable the NetworkManager-dispatcher service by default.

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Issue 2:
NetworkManager still wasn't able to start the ad hoc network, but the logs revealed the following error message:

NetworkManager[369]: <error> [1393361692.286352] [nm-device.c:3355] start_sharing(): (wlan0/wlan0): failed to start dnsmasq: Could not find dnsmasq binary.

This was of course solved by installing the "dnsmasq" package.

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Solution to issue 2: Add dnsmasq as a required dependency for networkmanager. I understand if this isn't going to happen, as it would logically require the other optional packages (bluez, etc) to become required as well. It would however make NetworkManager more user friendly.

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Steps to reproduce:

nm-applet -> Manage connections -> Add.. -> Shared -> (System connection) -> Ok.
Connect to the new network named "Shared_Wireless_Connection" -> Connection fails.