Odd internet connection problems.

I have recently switched to openSUSE as my first GNU/Linux distro, and it looks great so far, but there is one problem. Recently I have been losing connection to the internet spontaneously, which can be temporarily restored by going into the YaST network settings and changing something then switching it back so the program goes through the "Saving Network Configuration" check-list. The connection drops again after a few minutes.

This is not an issue with my internet connection, as it works on both my Windows partition and on my phone.

Can anyone help me?

Welcome to SUSEUnbound, BlueGhost! Nice to see you here.

I'm not one of the gurus here, especially with networking, but one of them will be along and be of much greater help than I could be. In the mean time, I know they will need a bit more information than you've provided about your setup and problem. What version of OpenSuse are you using? 13.1? Are you using Network Manager or the "traditonal" (iptables) method to manage your connection? What sort of Internet connection do you have; cable, DSL, etc.? Are you using a router? Ethernet or wireless? Any of your hardware configuration could be helpful. When does the connection drop, when you're actually using it? After it's been idle? After a specific period of time? The more information you give the more likely a quick and accurate assessment can be made.

Please be patient, the list has been slow lately, and the guys who are most likely to be the most help are in the eastern U.S. and are dealing with the weather right now, which could mean either they're cooped up with nothing to do, which would be good for you, or are dealing with power outages, keeping warm, and clearing driveways, which could mean delay.

Again, nice to see you here, and hope to see more of you.

 

bozo wrote:

Welcome to SUSEUnbound, BlueGhost! Nice to see you here.

I'm not one of the gurus here, especially with networking, but one of them will be along and be of much greater help than I could be. In the mean time, I know they will need a bit more information than you've provided about your setup and problem. What version of OpenSuse are you using? 13.1? Are you using Network Manager or the "traditonal" (iptables) method to manage your connection? What sort of Internet connection do you have; cable, DSL, etc.? Are you using a router? Ethernet or wireless? Any of your hardware configuration could be helpful. When does the connection drop, when you're actually using it? After it's been idle? After a specific period of time? The more information you give the more likely a quick and accurate assessment can be made.

Please be patient, the list has been slow lately, and the guys who are most likely to be the most help are in the eastern U.S. and are dealing with the weather right now, which could mean either they're cooped up with nothing to do, which would be good for you, or are dealing with power outages, keeping warm, and clearing driveways, which could mean delay.

Again, nice to see you here, and hope to see more of you.

 

Apologies, I should have though of that earlier. I have openSUSE 13.1 KDE, the connection manager is set to "ifup" within YaST, I believe my internet works via cable, and I am using a single router connected to the modem. My computer is linked to it vie Ethernet.

As to my network-related hardware, YaST identifies a

RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller

and a generic Ethernet network card. I find that as soon as SUSE is booted the connection drops, which is restored momentarily if I go into YaST's network management tools and change an option then change it back again which makes it go through a checklist. It drops after a few minutes regardless of whether I am actively using it or not.

If there is any more information I can give you, please do say. Also, I wish the best of luck to all the people in the eastern U.S., and I hope the situation gets better.  

As I said, I'm not the goto guy for networking, but since no one else has showed up yet, I'll make some simple suggestions that might not help, but they shouldn't hurt anything or be difficult to reverse.

Because I'm a mechanical sort, plus I'm known to overlook some obvious stuff at times, and because it's fairly easy and cheap (that's me, cheap and easy   ), I tend to check mechanical type things first: is it plugged in (yours obviously is), try re-seating the network card. Check both ends of the Ethernet cable for possible damage and that both ends are securely plugged in, or just try a different, known good, cable (probably OK since your windows partition isn't having a problem, but I'd check anyway just to be thorough and on the off chance that your windows setup is a little more fault tolerant.     Like I said, unlikely).

Try using Network Manager. It's progressed a lot, and has developed into a very nice tool. Just go into Yast, where it says you're using the Traditional method (ifup) (which is correct. I mentioned iptables before, which has to do with the firewall, I think. Ignore me when I'm having senile moments.), and right above that click the radio button for Network Manager, click Accept or Continue or whatever's in the lower right corner. Yast will tell you, if not now then the next time you come to this page, that you can't change network settings in Yast now, to go to the Network Manager. After Yast is done an icon should appear in your system tray, I think it will look like an Ethernet port with a wire hanging out of it. I think you should be connected at this point, and hopefully stay connected. If not, try logging out of KDE and logging back in, or just reboot so everything can start over. It *should* just work. Then come back and fill us in on what happened. Hopefully you will say, "Thanks a bunch, I can't believe how well that worked!"

But, really, tell us the truth!

 

bozo wrote:

As I said, I'm not the goto guy for networking, but since no one else has showed up yet, I'll make some simple suggestions that might not help, but they shouldn't hurt anything or be difficult to reverse.

Because I'm a mechanical sort, plus I'm known to overlook some obvious stuff at times, and because it's fairly easy and cheap (that's me, cheap and easy   ), I tend to check mechanical type things first: is it plugged in (yours obviously is), try re-seating the network card. Check both ends of the Ethernet cable for possible damage and that both ends are securely plugged in, or just try a different, known good, cable (probably OK since your windows partition isn't having a problem, but I'd check anyway just to be thorough and on the off chance that your windows setup is a little more fault tolerant.     Like I said, unlikely).

Try using Network Manager. It's progressed a lot, and has developed into a very nice tool. Just go into Yast, where it says you're using the Traditional method (ifup) (which is correct. I mentioned iptables before, which has to do with the firewall, I think. Ignore me when I'm having senile moments.), and right above that click the radio button for Network Manager, click Accept or Continue or whatever's in the lower right corner. Yast will tell you, if not now then the next time you come to this page, that you can't change network settings in Yast now, to go to the Network Manager. After Yast is done an icon should appear in your system tray, I think it will look like an Ethernet port with a wire hanging out of it. I think you should be connected at this point, and hopefully stay connected. If not, try logging out of KDE and logging back in, or just reboot so everything can start over. It *should* just work. Then come back and fill us in on what happened. Hopefully you will say, "Thanks a bunch, I can't believe how well that worked!"

But, really, tell us the truth!

 

Welp, did not help all that much. I set it to use the Connection Manager, then went into Manage Networks and added a wired network. Not much happened, so I restarted my PC. Internet access was completely lost at that point, so I took this screenshot:

And switched back to YaST control, then got a few more minutes to post this.  

bozo wrote:

As I said, I'm not the goto guy for networking, but since no one else has showed up yet, I'll make some simple suggestions that might not help, but they shouldn't hurt anything or be difficult to reverse.

Because I'm a mechanical sort, plus I'm known to overlook some obvious stuff at times, and because it's fairly easy and cheap (that's me, cheap and easy   ), I tend to check mechanical type things first: is it plugged in (yours obviously is), try re-seating the network card. Check both ends of the Ethernet cable for possible damage and that both ends are securely plugged in, or just try a different, known good, cable (probably OK since your windows partition isn't having a problem, but I'd check anyway just to be thorough and on the off chance that your windows setup is a little more fault tolerant.     Like I said, unlikely).

Try using Network Manager. It's progressed a lot, and has developed into a very nice tool. Just go into Yast, where it says you're using the Traditional method (ifup) (which is correct. I mentioned iptables before, which has to do with the firewall, I think. Ignore me when I'm having senile moments.), and right above that click the radio button for Network Manager, click Accept or Continue or whatever's in the lower right corner. Yast will tell you, if not now then the next time you come to this page, that you can't change network settings in Yast now, to go to the Network Manager. After Yast is done an icon should appear in your system tray, I think it will look like an Ethernet port with a wire hanging out of it. I think you should be connected at this point, and hopefully stay connected. If not, try logging out of KDE and logging back in, or just reboot so everything can start over. It *should* just work. Then come back and fill us in on what happened. Hopefully you will say, "Thanks a bunch, I can't believe how well that worked!"

But, really, tell us the truth!

 

It's me again. I found that disabling the firewall allows me to connect to webpages, and noticed something I should've noticed a while ago. My download manager is still downloading after Firefox and Midori tell me I have no internet access. Could the firewall be the fault here?

TheBlueGhost wrote:

bozo wrote:

Quotes

It's me again. I found that disabling the firewall allows me to connect to webpages, and noticed something I should've noticed a while ago. My download manager is still downloading after Firefox and Midori tell me I have no internet access. Could the firewall be the fault here?

Nevermind, that theory's gone out of the window. My browsers display errors but everything else works? What is happening?  

Sorry it took so long to get back to you. If I understand right, switching from ifup to Network Manager failed completely (you got no connection at all), then after switching back, the old behavior was back. Then you discovered that the Internet connection itself was not actually dropping, but two different browsers were losing communication with the Internet, while other applications continued to work.

Thinking of the firewall was a good idea. When you turned the firewall off, was everything working all the time? And turning it back on only hurt the browser's connection? The firewall can selectively block individual applications, by blocking the ports that they use. Other applications may use different ports.

I don't use IRC myself, due to a slow connection, slow fingers and a slow mind, but one of the guys here used to hang out on our IRC channel (address is on the left of your screen, at the bottom of the column). Look for bdquick. He's one of the guys I've been hoping would chime in here. He's not been spending as much time online as he used to, having just gotten married, and he lives back east, so I don't know if he'd be online anyway, but he'd be more qualified than I am to help you out. And if you use a dedicated IRC client (not through your browser), you can see if that connection drops. Just one more bit of information that might help in diagnosis. Just as any other non-browser Internet client might. Usenet, VOIP, Skype, or, when you think you've dropped the connection, (or better, before and after) open a terminal and try a ping or traceroute and see what results you get. The more information, the better.

We're reaching my networking limits here. Anything else I suggest would be with little confidence, would probably involve more work and chance breaking something, and would merely be WAGs. I'm not giving up, just warning you. Current ideas are installing another browser (I like Opera, although I've had trouble with frequent crashes with versions newer than 11.64. I'm blaming it on my still running OpenSuse 11.0 on my desktop, but I've read others have had problems with the newer versions also). Or, try a text only browser like Lynx, just to see if it works better, or re-installing (updating if there's a newer version) your present browsers. I believe KDE installs Konqueror by default. Have you tried it? (In my opinion it's only a so-so web browser, but a *great* file manager. I like it a lot better than Thunar.)

Keep posting back with what's happening. I need to do some research if I'm going to be of any help. And any results, even negative, might help the next guy that comes here for help. Hang in there, this *is* resolvable.

 

bozo wrote:

Quote
 

Yeah, networks have to be my least favourite part of computing. Everything is rather odd. I boot up, nothing works. Steam doesn't connect, uGet doesn't download, browsers don't... Browse. I go into YaST, restart the firewall, everything works okay. Then the browsers display errors again and nothing can connect to the internet, except the things that already have and they continue to do their things without a hitch. I don't understand the pattern that causes the connection to die. Periods of inactivity? Too much activity? Networks are weird.

Have you tried bypassing your router and connecting straight to the modem? This would serve to check whether there is a problem in the interaction between the firewall and router. If it works OK without the router, and windows is working with router, that would possibly narrow down where to look.

  

I meant to say "between the computer and the router". The firewall is one possibility, but there are others.

  

bozo wrote:

I meant to say "between the computer and the router". The firewall is one possibility, but there are others.

  

Since I have barely anything on SUSE at the moment and I feel I messed up the whole system a bit by being a ponce who underestimated package managers, I want to do a fresh install from a DVD rather than the Live image I used before. If this doesn't solve it then I'll go a-lookin' through the hardware. Unfortunately I have to use the router as I am not the only connected user, and I don't have a wireless network card because I assembled the PC myself.

You'd only need maybe ten minutes without the router. Just long enough to see if the connection was OK without it. If it was, you would know it was something conflicting between the OpenSuse install and the router. The router itself is OK as shown by windows working fine with it. If you knew it was just a conflict there, it would focus your troubleshooting efforts.

The re-installing of Suse is not a bad idea. Just some time and effort. I've always done DVD installs due to a slow and sometimes unreliable Internet connection. Plus I just liked the idea that I had all that software locally in case I wanted some of it. That's probably less valid in these days of more rapid update cycles and shorter support times. But I still like the idea of not relying on a not always reliable Internet connection during install.

Based on the tests you've already done and the fact that the windows partition on the same machine performs fine, I really don't think it is likely that you have any hardware problems, especially with a hardwired Ethernet connection. Ethernet has always been very reliable. Wireless, maybe not so much, but problems there are much less common than they used to be. When I got my laptop, it had vista pre-installed. I put OpenSuse 11.2 on another partition. I had no home network at the time. My wife had cable Internet (we have separate houses; long story). Vista connected via Wi-fi no problem. But I *could not* get Suse to connect wirelessly. (My son's Linux laptop connected OK. My Zaurus PDA running Linux connected fine.) With an Ethernet cable things worked great. However, when I went to my son's house, I had no problems using Suse with his Wi-fi. But vista refused to connect.    Public hotspots I generally had no problems with either one. When I got my router, no problems either. My wife's router finally gave up, and I've had no problems with either OS on the new router. Never figured that behavior out.   

Anyway, (sorry to get so long-winded and rambling) please keep us posted on what happens.

 

bozo wrote:

You'd only need maybe ten minutes without the router. Just long enough to see if the connection was OK without it. If it was, you would know it was something conflicting between the OpenSuse install and the router. The router itself is OK as shown by windows working fine with it. If you knew it was just a conflict there, it would focus your troubleshooting efforts.

The re-installing of Suse is not a bad idea. Just some time and effort. I've always done DVD installs due to a slow and sometimes unreliable Internet connection. Plus I just liked the idea that I had all that software locally in case I wanted some of it. That's probably less valid in these days of more rapid update cycles and shorter support times. But I still like the idea of not relying on a not always reliable Internet connection during install.

Based on the tests you've already done and the fact that the windows partition on the same machine performs fine, I really don't think it is likely that you have any hardware problems, especially with a hardwired Ethernet connection. Ethernet has always been very reliable. Wireless, maybe not so much, but problems there are much less common than they used to be. When I got my laptop, it had vista pre-installed. I put OpenSuse 11.2 on another partition. I had no home network at the time. My wife had cable Internet (we have separate houses; long story). Vista connected via Wi-fi no problem. But I *could not* get Suse to connect wirelessly. (My son's Linux laptop connected OK. My Zaurus PDA running Linux connected fine.) With an Ethernet cable things worked great. However, when I went to my son's house, I had no problems using Suse with his Wi-fi. But vista refused to connect.    Public hotspots I generally had no problems with either one. When I got my router, no problems either. My wife's router finally gave up, and I've had no problems with either OS on the new router. Never figured that behavior out.   

Anyway, (sorry to get so long-winded and rambling) please keep us posted on what happens.

 

I have reinstalled openSUSE and everything is once again fine. Thanks a lot for your help!

I'm not sure I was really any help, but I was happy to try. Glad you've got it running now. Check back in once in a while and say hi!

  

bozo wrote:

I'm not sure I was really any help, but I was happy to try. Glad you've got it running now. Check back in once in a while and say hi!

  

I found what I was doing wrong when the problem occurred again. I unwittingly installed IPList. Mm hmm.  

Thanks for cluing me in. I've never used such an app. I guess that's why it didn't occur to me to check. But I can see how it could cause some problems. Maybe I'll remember in the future. Good that you've got it sorted now.

Have fun! And don't be a stranger.

  

I'm glad you found the problem and sorry I didn't check the board sooner. I can't say that I've ever heard of that program before.

I was sorry you hadn't checked in, too! I was feeling pretty lost there for a while. I'd never heard of IPList, either. Evidently it's some kind of a whitelist/blacklist thing. I think he had nothing in the whitelist.

I just had something kind of wierd/similar happen. I installed an add-on in Opera for downloading YouTube videos. Seems it blocked all IP addresses just by being installed, even when disabled. Had to unistall/delete it for anything to work. Don't understand it.