UniFi WIFIman Desktop installation for Fedora

UniFi-WIFIman-desktop-for-Fedora.md

Wireguard and wifiman-desktop Installation Guide for Fedora

This guide provides step-by-step instructions for installing and running wifiman-desktop (originally distributed as a .deb package) on Fedora, including troubleshooting for common dependency and SELinux issues.

This guide was created on Fedora 42 with WIFIman 1.1.3.

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1. Download the original deb file

First download the deb file from UniFi.

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2. Install Required Tools

Install alien to convert .deb packages to .rpm:

sudo dnf install -y alien rpmrebuild

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3. Convert the .deb Package to .rpm

Replace the filename as needed:

sudo alien -r --scripts wifiman-desktop-1.1.3-amd64.deb

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4. Rebuild the RPM Package

This step allows you to remove problematic file entries from the package:

rpmrebuild -pe wi-fiman-desktop-1.1.3-2.x86_64.rpm

During the interactive editor step, remove entries related to /usr, /usr/bin, and /usr/lib as needed.

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5. Install the Rebuilt RPM Package

Update the package dependencies and WIFIman itself:

sudo dnf install -y webkit2gtk4.0 libayatana-appindicator-gtk3
sudo rpm -i ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64/wi-fiman-desktop-1.1.3-2.x86_64.rpm

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6. Launch wifiman-desktop

Via desktop launcher or via

wi-fiman-desktop

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7. Resolve SELinux Errors

If journalctl -xe shows SELinux errors for the wifiman service, then adjust selinux context:

sudo semanage fcontext -a -t bin_t "/usr/lib/wi-fiman-desktop/wifiman-desktopd"
sudo restorecon -v /usr/lib/wi-fiman-desktop/wifiman-desktopd
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart wifiman-desktop.service

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8. Log In and Enable Teleport

At this point, you should be able to use wifiman-desktop on Fedora!

If you get no Internet connection on the first try, disable teleport and enable it again.

It was not so easy for me but after 1:30H troubleshooting i finally got it working.
My problem was that the teleport vpn would create a wireguard config but delete it right after.
After looking in the logs of Wifi-man i saw
INFO: Running wg command: up ERROR: Error runWireguard exit status 1 INFO: Service installation failed - performing safe config file cleanup INFO: ✓ Configuration file removed successfully
I build a quick wrapper for wg-quick and found out that wireguard couldnt set up the DNS.
Failed to set DNS configuration: Could not activate remote peer 'org.freedesktop.resolve1': activation request failed: unknown unit
I dont know if it was a problem with my linux setup or a gerenal problem but enabling systemd-resolved fixed the problem.
sudo systemctl enable --now systemd-resolved
Thats the command for anyone who has the same problem as me

Now i can finally say running on Fedora 44 with wayland thanks to @lvturner and @catchin