A spooky network problem

Message

Lavene · #1 Post by **Lavene** » 2006-10-31 10:22

After I dist-upgraded my Etch a few days ago I'm having a very strange network problem: When 'coldbooting' Etch the network fail to come up. Doing 'ifup eth0' does absolutly nothing, it just hangs there untill aborted.

Now, I have a 'just in case' partition with Ubuntu on it so I booted it to check that I wasn't suffering from a HW failure and sure enough... no network problem what so ever. So reasured I rebooted and this time Debian came up flawlessly! I rebooted and again there was no problem.

A bit puzzled I did a full shut down and power off, restarted the machine and this time: No network. Another shutdown, boot Ubuntu, verified working network, reboot (without powering down) into Etch and averything works. New power off, restart... no network. Power down, reboot Knoppix... no problems. Reboot (no power-off) into Etch: No problem.

So to sum up: 'Cold boot' makes Etch fail to bring up the network. 'Warm-boot' after a different distro have been using the network it all works perfectly.

I have ruled out my router by the way. I have two other machines connected to it an they have no problem. Also I have experienced the problem when running my machine directly connected to my ADSL modem. Machine is an Asus L3000 notebook.

I have absolutly no idea where to start looking to fix this one. I see no difference in 'dmesg' for when the network comes up and when it doesen't. Any idea is welcome.

Tina

plugwash · #2 Post by **plugwash** » 2006-10-31 10:39

did you upgrade your kernel at the same time as upgrading to etch?

Lavene · #3 Post by **Lavene** » 2006-10-31 10:49

plugwash wrote:did you upgrade your kernel at the same time as upgrading to etch?

Actually no but that's probably worth a shot... So 2.6.18 is compiling as I type this

I'll post back the result...

Thanks
Tina

Edit: I did by the way not 'upgrade to' Etch. It was already Etch, I just dit-upgraded it in order to fix that annoying 'kdesu' bug...

Grifter · #4 Post by **Grifter** » 2006-10-31 13:34

I have experienced the same thing, I had eth0 set to dhcp, changing it to static solved it for me, but I figure it might be the mapping eth0, allow-hotplug eth0 that are the bandits in case you want to retain dhcp

Lavene · #5 Post by **Lavene** » 2006-10-31 14:05

Grifter wrote:I have experienced the same thing, I had eth0 set to dhcp, changing it to static solved it for me, but I figure it might be the mapping eth0, allow-hotplug eth0 that are the bandits in case you want to retain dhcp

Thanks, I'll look into that. A new kernel did not help...

Tina

ghostdawg · #6 Post by **ghostdawg** » 2006-10-31 20:50

I know you are using Etch but I'm using Sid and never experience any of that during an apt-get dist-upgrade. I just did it Monday after a week and no problems.

Just a thought.

Lavene · #7 Post by **Lavene** » 2006-10-31 20:53

ghostdawg wrote:I know you are using Etch but I'm using Sid and never experience any of that during an apt-get dist-upgrade. I just did it Monday after a week and no problems.

Just a thought.

Yeah, I've thought about that. But other than this problem I have a pretty good setup now so I want to investigate it a bit further. Atleast I want to try and pin-point the problem in order to make sure an upgrade to Sid will actually fix it.

Tina

przemko · #8 Post by **przemko** » 2006-11-02 11:34

I have the same problem. First I could fix it by going to control center and reenabling the eth0 but now even this does not work. When I reenable eth0, it remains on for about 2 sec and then becomes disabled again. Any idea how I could fix it? Debian is my only system so now I cannot access internet to update the distro anyway. I am using another computer to post this message.

Oh, yes, the distro is Etch that I updated the last week (apt-get distr-upgrade)

Please, someone help me on that!

willyram · #9 Post by **willyram** » 2006-11-02 12:16

I am also experiencing the same problem. In another thread I stated this, but let me reproduce the main part here:

I tried to install etch. I did a net install (beta 3 cd), only the "base" (ie: left tasksel options blank) and came to a command line interfase. Fine.

Right after that, I logged in as root, made "apt-get update", then "apt-get upgrade". Some 50 Mb of download, installed fine.

Then I booted.... and found that I could no longer connect to the internet.

I could figure out the a the kernel was upgraded as part of the upgrade, the linux-image-2.6-2-486 package was the one upgrade.

Willie.

Lavene · #10 Post by **Lavene** » 2006-11-02 12:34

Well... seems like a bran new bug in Etch. Anyone have an idea what package(s) this could be hiding in? Would be interesting to look around the BTS.

Tina

Grifter · #11 Post by **Grifter** » 2006-11-02 13:57

did anyone try my fix?

if you boot up and the ethernet doesn't come up, it's very easy to bring it up by doing ifup eth0, the reason you don't have net is (i'm assuming here) because when dhclient is run, the interface still hasn't been brought up yet, changing dhcp to static and specifying hte values in /etc/network/interfaces will solve this, but if you still want to use dhcp, try removing the whole mapping, and the allow-hotplug stuff, there's no reason to hotplug a network card if it's pci, or built in, for example

Lavene · #12 Post by **Lavene** » 2006-11-02 14:16

Grifter wrote:did anyone try my fix?

Working on it... I just wanted to check if there were any bugs filed against the dhcp packages lately. I hate working around bugs... especially if it's unknown to the developers. (Of course... seeing active bugs more than eight years old is kinda discuraging...)

Grifter wrote:if you boot up and the ethernet doesn't come up, it's very easy to bring it up by doing ifup eth0, the reason you don't have net is (i'm assuming here) because when dhclient is run, the interface still hasn't been brought up yet

If that was the case shouldn't doing 'ifup' manually bring up the ethernet? As I said in my OP 'ifup' dosen't work... in fact it dosen't do anything at all. Not even an error message.

Tina

Lavene · #13 Post by **Lavene** » 2006-11-02 14:38

Grifter wrote:try removing the whole mapping, and the allow-hotplug stuff, there's no reason to hotplug a network card if it's pci, or built in, for example

That actually did something! Now doing 'ifup' manually works again, which is a step in the right direction. Still very annoying though.
Next up: trying with static. Probably not today though...

Thanks Grifter

Tina

cothrige · #14 Post by **cothrige** » 2006-11-02 16:28

I have been having this same problem after an aptitude upgrade on my etch box. About half the time I have noticed there is no internet connection, though following the advice I received on the debian-user list 'ifdown eth0' and then 'ifup eth0' did fix it this last time. Being new to Debian I started by scanning through /etc/init.d and could find nothing referencing dhcp at all. I could find nothing coming up during the boot, even when the internet would work, and nothing in dmesg. When is dhclient being run and how can I be sure it is even doing so?

Being new to Debian, and rather unschooled on dhcp, I am having some trouble understanding some of the advice given here, and perhaps someone will clarify things for me. How exactly would I remove the "whole mapping"? And what values would I put in /etc/network/interfaces if I wanted to?

Patrick

przemko · #15 Post by **przemko** » 2006-11-02 18:18

OK. some more clues. I did ifdown eth0 and what I got was:
/etc/network/interfaces:10 misplaced option
ifdown: couldn't read interfaces file "/etc/netwo/interfaces"

Now, for the record

I do have the file in the correct location. The contents of the "interfaces" file is:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
allow-hotplug eth0
address 127.0.0.1
netmask 255.0.0.0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
auto eth0

So, I am booting now using DamnSmallLinux just to post this message. yet another proof that my nic is peachy. It looks to me like either Etch specific or new kernel general problem. And it looks VERY SERIOUS...

The fact that I could get onto the net in the morning and could not get back on it at noon is worrisome. Especially that all I did was a bit of surfing. Never played with any settings. The way it looks like is that suddenly some files get overwritten or something.

I (and many others I think) need URGENT help!!!! Any takers?

Lavene · #16 Post by **Lavene** » 2006-11-02 18:26

cothrige wrote:Being new to Debian, and rather unschooled on dhcp, I am having some trouble understanding some of the advice given here, and perhaps someone will clarify things for me. How exactly would I remove the "whole mapping"? And what values would I put in /etc/network/interfaces if I wanted to?

Patrick

This is my curren /etc/network/interfaces:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# This is a list of hotpluggable network interfaces.
# They will be activated automatically by the hotplug subsystem.
# mapping eth0
# script grep
# map eth0

# The primary network interface
# allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

The comments in bold is what I commented out. After I did that 'ifupdown' started working again. I will try to add static IP later. Information about /etc/network/interfaces can be found in the man page:

Code: Select all

man interfaces

Tina

Lavene · #17 Post by **Lavene** » 2006-11-02 18:32

przemko wrote:So, I am booting now using DamnSmallLinux just to post this message. yet another proof that my nic is peachy. It looks to me like either Etch specific or new kernel general problem. And it looks VERY SERIOUS...

I don't think it's kernel related since I have the problem with both 2.6.15 and 2.6.18. I does seem to be an Etch problem though because it appear to happen after dist-upgrade.

Tina

przemko · #18 Post by **przemko** » 2006-11-02 18:33

one other bit of info. On DSL, the interfaces file looks like that:

# /etc/network/interfaces -- configuration file for ifup(8), ifdown(8)

# The loopback interface
# automatically added when upgrading
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

So, it seems that there is preciously little that one needs in the file. Perhaps commenting them off in debian will work? I'll give it a try

cothrige · #19 Post by **cothrige** » 2006-11-02 18:50

Lavene wrote: This is my curren /etc/network/interfaces:
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# This is a list of hotpluggable network interfaces.
# They will be activated automatically by the hotplug subsystem.
# mapping eth0
# script grep
# map eth0

# The primary network interface
# allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
The comments in bold is what I commented out.

Okay, here is what I have in /etc/network/interfaces:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

Nothing there about mapping or the like. I will comment out allow-hotplug eth0 and see what that does.

I wonder if anyone here has noticed whether any related dhcp software was uninstalled after their upgrade? The first thing I had done is look for dhcpcd, this was what always ran on my Slackware box, and it wasn't there. So, I installed it but it didn't help. I then installed dhcp-client and that made little difference, and so I installed dhcp3-client and rebooted. At least this time it did in fact configure my eth0 and I have internet. Perhaps it will not work the next time, but I am preparing to boot again to see. Since I can find nothing in dmesg or during boot, or in the init scripts, which seems to indicate when or how dhcp is being configured I can only guess at what software may actually be involved and what is really supposed to be installed. Any thoughts?

Patrick

cothrige · #20 Post by **cothrige** » 2006-11-02 19:01

Okay, that was interesting.

I commented out the hotplug line in /etc/network/interfaces and when I rebooted I had no eth0 up. Ifconfig returned only lo. Up until that time I had always had eth0 but no internet. I restored the file and restarted the machine and then had both eth0 and internet. I am not entirely sure whether that will continue, but for now at least it would seem to be going.

I am surprised that the hotplug line needed to be there, or at least appears to have to be there. I am using a PCI NIC and the driver is builtin to the kernel. I saw no reason for a module on that as it never varies. What exactly is there to need hotplug for in that?

Patrick