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**Guest** · May 26, 2011, 09:49 AM

Re: Naughty Narwhal broke my network connection!

Does it work if you use DCHP instead of static IP?

**mgwmgw** · May 26, 2011, 07:36 PM

Re: Naughty Narwhal broke my network connection!

I'm ART's S.O.

Thanks but I think DHCP is not really a practical option.
All our machines have static addresses.

Mary-Anne

**claydoh** · May 26, 2011, 08:00 PM

Re: Naughty Narwhal broke my network connection!

Have you tried editing /etc/network/interfaces to add the static info? I believe this has been necessary for this for static ips for at least a few releases now.

Some instructions here:
http://parabing.com/2011/05/07/make-...ic-ip-address/

My /etc/network/interfaces file only lists the lo loopback interface, if you have anything in there for eth0, that is what you would edit. I am not sure if networknanager will bypass or ignore that, however.

**mgwmgw** · May 27, 2011, 07:27 PM

Re: Naughty Narwhal broke my network connection!

Thanks for the pointer.
We made the edits suggested.
Then tried to restart the network,
and got the following replies
(dictated to me so I may not spell it right):

ifdown eth0
ifdown: interface eth0 not configured

ping 192.168.1.8
Network is unreachable

ifup eth0
Don't seem to have all the variables for eth0/inet.
Failed to bring up eth0

Here is what we see in the GUI

In System Settings
Network Settings
Wired
the home network

Connect automatically is checked.
System connection is greyed out.

For IP address basic settings
method is manual
IP address 192.168.1.8
Subnet mask is 255.255.255.0
Gateway 192.168.1.254
DNS Servers 68.87.73.242, 68.87.71.226
Search Domains has nothing in it
and we are not certain what should be there.
DHCP client ID is greyed out and blank.

Additional IP addresses is not filled in.

The Routes section has two options, neither of which is checked.
They are:
Ignore automatically obtained routes
Use only for resources on this connection

In the Ethernet tab
Restrict to interface Any
MTU Automatic

802.1X Security Tab
Check box for 802.1X Authentication is not checked.
All other options on that page are greyed out.

The proxy section says
connect to the internet directly.

Where and how do we fix this?

Thanks.

Mary-Anne

**claydoh** · May 27, 2011, 08:41 PM

Re: Naughty Narwhal broke my network connection!

I do not know how to bypass network-manager for static ip's
(I cheat and have my router assign a static ip to my wired desktop based on it mac address, one outside the range of dhcp ip numbers - then the network-manager automatically uses this connection)

http://www.kubuntuguide.info/index.p...tic_IP_address
these seems to indicate that you may want to try and disable n-m (I wouldn't want to uninstall it until we are sure you can get connected first) :

Code:

sudo service network-manager stop

this tuns it off. Then try manually editing /etc/network/interfaces as described, then see if you can bring the network up.

then if you want to restart n-m, type this:

Code:

sudo service network-manager start

wicd may be a good alternative, but you would have to either download the packages manually on another system, or temporarily turn on dhcp to install it.

**atorrey** · May 27, 2011, 09:45 PM

Re: Naughty Narwhal broke my network connection!

As Mary-Anne mentioned, we made the suggested edits in the Parabing article without apparent change in the way the system was acting. It could ping itself on lo, but not on it's own eth0 address (192.168.1.8) checking w/ ifconfig -a, I get some results for eth0, but it doesn't show an address, or that eth0 is up.

IF I do a manual "ifconfig eth0 192.168.1 up" then ifconfig -a will show both the IPV4 and IPV6 addresses, and I can ping any live address on the local network only - including the gateway address - but I can't ping either my ISP (comcast.net) or it's DNS server address (68.87.71.226)- which should be the addresses just the other side of the gateway...

Does anyone know what changed in the networking between Meerkat and Narwhal? Given that the network worked quite nicely in both Lucid and Meerkat, I figure the problem has to be in whatever changed, as I did NOT do any editing or other changes besides telling kpackagekit to do the automatic upgrade...

I am somewhat confused by one item in the Kubuntu guide article about setting a static IP mentioned earlier - I recognize and understand all the stuff in the interface file except one -

Code:

iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.35
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.0.0 <---- WHAT IS THIS LINE? 
broadcast 192.168.0.255
gateway 192.168.0.1

I wasn't sure what that line is for (it doesn't show up anywhere I know of on my Gentoo box), or what address I should be using, so I commented it out...

One other detail that makes life a bit more complicated, is that the central node of the home network, with the router/hub and cable modem is in the basement - a little over a year ago I had an accident that left me a paraplegic, and my wheelchair doesn't do stairs so I can't physically access the hardware... However the hardware in the basement seems to be running fine, as it works with the other machines using the network....

ART

**claydoh** · May 28, 2011, 01:26 AM

Re: Naughty Narwhal broke my network connection!

have you turned off network-manager yet?
I do not know what has changed, but as far as I remember I have not been able to get the network-manager to accept a static ip - the 'auto eth0' always took precedence. This has been an issue with KDE's network-manager gui for quite a few releases as far as I remember.

I am hoping a networking guru will step up and lend their experience, but i will continue to explore.

As wicd is supposed to work well with this, one could install that. There re only 3 packages to grab:
python-wicd wicd-daemon wicd-kde
but really, turning off n-m as I described and manually setting up the networking should work.

https://help.ubuntu.com/11.04/server...#ip-addressing
describes what to do to both configure and start the networking. (mostly a rehashing other than the manual starting - so you don't have to keep rebooting)

**josefko** · May 28, 2011, 03:23 AM

Re: Naughty Narwhal broke my network connection!

I would not blame knetwork manager. The last week during some testing I was able to connect to network with it. I established new wired connection with static IP and DNS and switched on connections menu manually to it.

**mgwmgw** · May 30, 2011, 07:34 PM

Re: Naughty Narwhal broke my network connection!

I have seen the other threads that blame Network Manager.
Thing is, Network Manager worked in the previous version.
We're still stuck.

I have been trying to find out what changed between Narwhal and the Meerkat,
and I have not found the right place to look for that.

**atorrey** · May 30, 2011, 08:15 PM

Re: Naughty Narwhal broke my network connection!

I'm actually starting to think downgrading back to Lucid or Meerkat might be the best approach, seeing as how those versions did "just work"... Obviously since I can't make a functional network connection, I will have to download and burn a CD and do a re-install from that. Obviously I want to protect / back up my /home directory - any other stuff I should be sure to back up if I don't want to lose personal information? (I'm not all that worried about configuration files or re-installing apps, just things like personal documents, bookmark files, and other not-easily-replaced things of that sort...

Are there any special instructions for doing a rollback from CD, or is it basically just like doing a new install?

Thanks,
ART

**claydoh** · May 30, 2011, 08:30 PM

Re: Naughty Narwhal broke my network connection!

Save your /home/<username> folder if it is not on a separate partition
You cannot really roll back, only reinstall. If your /home is on its own partition, all your personal data is not wiped out, and the new installation will get you back to where you were in terms of applicztion settings and data.

I am wondering if somehow there is a driver regression. I should have asked what Ethernet card your system has, as the vast majority Just Work, and as you said, you could ping other machines.

Do try out the livecd before you install again, just be be sure that you can connect beforehand to rule out the potential of a bad cable or wonky card.

**josefko** · May 30, 2011, 09:54 PM

Re: Naughty Narwhal broke my network connection!

To protect your home you can use these steps:
- Immediately after start of fresh install choose that you want to divide disk manually
- Define mount point / on the old Linux disk partition
- Then you will be asked, if you want reformat Linux disk partition
- If you answer no, all files in home directory will stay intact and all old system files will be removed and replaced with a fresh install

**atorrey** · May 30, 2011, 10:40 PM

Re: Naughty Narwhal broke my network connection!

Originally posted by claydoh

Save your /home/<username> folder if it is not on a separate partition
You cannot really roll back, only reinstall. If your /home is on its own partition, all your personal data is not wiped out, and the new installation will get you back to where you were in terms of applicztion settings and data.

I am wondering if somehow there is a driver regression. I should have asked what Ethernet card your system has, as the vast majority Just Work, and as you said, you could ping other machines.

Do try out the livecd before you install again, just be be sure that you can connect beforehand to rule out the potential of a bad cable or wonky card.

Not sure off hand what the card is, but the machine is a Lenovo "Thinkpad" notebook - Intel Centrino based that I specifically chose because it was supposed to be very good in the general "Linux compatibility" area - it literally has never had a Microsoft EULA accepted on it, as my first act on taking it out of the box was to FDISK the drive... The card is the one that came built into it.

Will give some kind of live CD a try before re-installing, either a Kubuntu, or possibly one of the "SystemRescue" CD's I already have...

ART

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