NetworkManager autoconnects to wired profiles in reverse order

When I select a wired profile manually and reboot, NetworkManager instead connects to the profile that has the oldest timestamp. So it's not connecting to the last used profile, which is troublesome.

On all of our machines (about 500), we define three wired network profiles, one DHCP and two static. We're migrating from Debian to Ubuntu, so this bug has only surfaced now for us.

This can be reproduced by creating a couple of network profiles on the same wired interface and then rebooting or restarting network-manager. It will loop through the network profiles in the same order always. So it's doing the exact reverse of what's supposed to happen.

I did some digging and I applied a simple patch to the source code. This seems to have fixed the issue. I posted my patch for verification on the networkmanager mailing list and it was verified as being correct by Beniamino Galvani, one of the developers.

Here is the link to the network-manager topic: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/networkmanager-list/2016-August/msg00053.html

This is the patch (also included as attachment):

--- nm-device.c 2016-08-16 15:37:50.000000000 +0200
+++ nm-device_patched.c 2016-08-16 15:44:08.308729955 +0200
@@ -1267,7 +1267,7 @@
                s_con = nm_connection_get_setting_connection (connection);
                g_assert (s_con);
                if (nm_setting_connection_get_autoconnect (s_con))
- available_conns = g_slist_prepend (available_conns, connection);
+ available_conns = g_slist_append (available_conns, connection);
        }

        if (!available_conns)

I hope to get this patch included in the trusty package, so somebody else can benefit from this.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: network-manager 0.9.8.8-0ubuntu7.3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-34.53~14.04.1-generic 4.4.15
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-34-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.21
Architecture: amd64
CRDA: Error: [Errno 2] Bestand of map bestaat niet: 'iw'
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Tue Aug 16 15:23:17 2016
IfupdownConfig:
 auto lo
 iface lo inet loopback
IpRoute:
 default via 10.30.6.1 dev em1 proto static
 10.30.6.0/24 dev em1 proto kernel scope link src 10.30.6.204 metric 1
 10.40.8.0/21 dev tun0 proto kernel scope link src 10.40.8.31
IwConfig:
 tun0 no wireless extensions.

 em1 no wireless extensions.

 lo no wireless extensions.
NetworkManager.state:
 [main]
 NetworkingEnabled=true
 WirelessEnabled=true
 WWANEnabled=true
 WimaxEnabled=true
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=nl_BE:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=nl_BE
 SHELL=/bin/bash
RfKill:

SourcePackage: network-manager
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
WifiSyslog:

nmcli-con:
 NAME UUID TYPE TIMESTAMP TIMESTAMP-REAL AUTOCONNECT READONLY DBUS-PATH
 DHCP 702624f9-f052-473a-b131-acd2045e6ec2 802-3-ethernet 1471353746 di 16 aug 2016 15:22:26 CEST yes no /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Settings/1
 Proximus 7a9a5bc2-d51a-46b4-b721-050a607951bc 802-3-ethernet 1471353744 di 16 aug 2016 15:22:24 CEST yes no /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Settings/0
nmcli-dev:
 DEVICE TYPE STATE DBUS-PATH
 em1 802-3-ethernet connected /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/0
nmcli-nm:
 RUNNING VERSION STATE NET-ENABLED WIFI-HARDWARE WIFI WWAN-HARDWARE WWAN
 running 0.9.8.8 connected enabled enabled enabled enabled disabled