Ubuntu Mate WiFi configuration

Question

I have installed Ubuntu Mate on my Pi2, and it is working well, but I have some problems with WiFi.

I have 2 Wi-Pi dongles, which I use with my 3 Pis. My router allocates reserved IP based on MAC.

If I boot the Pi with 1 dongle it works OK. ifconfig shows

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:c1:41:16:04:36  
      inet addr:10.1.1.31  Bcast:10.1.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
      inet6 addr: fe80::dbc:5df5:7891:e883/64 Scope:Link
      inet6 addr: fe80::2c1:41ff:fe16:436/64 Scope:Link
      UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
      RX packets:5341 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
      TX packets:4802 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
      collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
      RX bytes:4303855 (4.3 MB)  TX bytes:690141 (690.1 KB)

If I swap dongles it does not work and it seems to think the other dongle is wlan1

wlan1     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:c1:40:50:02:69  
      UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
      RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
      TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
      collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
      RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

I can't seem to find anything which allocates wlan1 or wlan0

Both adapters work OK on the same Pi running Raspbian.

Answer 1

In desperation I tried adding a new network, which it still assigned to wlan1, but this now works. It seems that Ubuntu needs connection for each Adapter/Network combination. I now have 4! (2 networks * 2 adaptors).

I have since updated to Ubuntu 16.04 and run on my 2 Pi3. I again had some slight difficulties with networking.

I have at least found where NetworkManager stores its configuration files in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections

Each "connection" has a separate file which appear to contain identical entries EXCEPT for a unique ID, UUID and MAC address.

It appears there is an option to specify interface by name e.g. wlan0 or MAC or both.