13.10 Wired networking issues after latest kernel updates

[Rudjgaard]

Hello, I am having some major problems with networking after the latest system updates.
I searched a lot before posting and tried several solutions but am stuck because nothing worked.
On 13.04 everything was working flawlessly, then i updated to 13.10 and some problems started.

Image 13.11.0-13 generic
- wired connection established but network manager is stuck at "connecting", need to power off/on router then everything works fine

Image 13.11.0-14 generic
- No network connection at all. eth0 isn't detected, no eth0 device so no wired connection available in manager
- ping obviously doesn't work and manually starting dhcp client gives eth0 not found.
- iconfig only sees lo network and no eth

It is a desktop pc without wireless adapter so i canno't test if that is working.
Booting on win7 and from android phone everything works fine, so router settings are probably ruled out.
I don't use a fixed ip but it is well in the router's range. Ufw and router fw are both disabled.

The solutions I tried so far:
- add auto eth to networkInterfaces
- disabled ipv6
- removed and reinstalled network-manager package and -dbg package
- renamed udev net rules to avoid possible permissions conflict with other rule
- disabled iwlwifi in modprobe

None of the above worked, I am starting to believe that rather than a configuration problem it could be a missing driver in the latest update?
I desperately need help as this is a pretty major inconvenience and do not know what solutions to try anymore

Cheers

[gordintoronto]

Is this in virtual machines? Otherwise, I can't figure out what you mean by "Image 13.11.0-13 generic".

Perhaps you could paste the output from this command: lspci

You might also mention the brand and model of the computer.

[Rudjgaard]

Thank you for replying

No it is not vm, it's full ubuntu distro. what i am referring to is the current kernel version (which was updated a couple days ago)

The computer as I said above is a desktop pc. (MB asus m4a89tdpro and amd phenom II x6 cpu if it can be of any utility)

This is the output of lspci
[HIDE]

04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 06)

[/HIDE]

[varunendra]

Please try the proprietary driver as suggested in this post, and let us know if it is any better.

[Rudjgaard]

Thank you Varun, generating image specific driver did the trick
I still have one annoying problem, wired connection is established but
network manager doesn't show ip, dns etc. (only hw address) and it gets stuck at 'connecting...'
Ip is in router range and address assignment is automatic
To be able to navigate i have to power cycle the router each time after boot or alternatively
from terminal restarting network-manager service
Since 13.10 i got working sleep/suspend, even though normal boot is affected from my very tiny experience I
think the problem is related to sleep/wake eth handling by the os

[varunendra]

To be able to navigate i have to power cycle the router each time after boot

This sounds same as what you had to do earlier -

Image 13.11.0-13 generic
- wired connection established but network manager is stuck at "connecting", need to power off/on router then everything works fine

So how do you see this as a progress?

Please show us the outputs of -

uname -mr
ifconfig -a
nm-tool
route -n
cat /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state
cat /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf
cat /etc/network/interfaces
dmesg | grep -i dhclient
sudo ethtool eth0

You may have to install ethtool beforehand (sudo apt-get install ethtool).

[Rudjgaard]

Thank you for your help Varun but i managed to solve it
I changed isp recently and I noticed that there was an old dns set in resolv.conf
Deleted /etc/resolv.conf, rebooted so a new one got created and voilà.
Thank you again for your help with the drivers, the router restart problem only
worked on the old kernel, after the update eth wasn't working at all but our solution worked

Edit: I don't want to leave misleading info around.
The boot connection problem wasn't caused by resolv.conf, but network manager which has
problems in releasing/renewing ip when it changes on boot.

[varunendra]

Edit: I don't want to leave misleading info around.
The boot connection problem wasn't caused by resolv.conf, but network manager which has
problems in releasing/renewing ip when it changes on boot.

Glad you got it sorted out, and thanks for the updated info.

PS:
Be aware that a kernel update will reset the driver to the native r8169 that comes with the kernel. As long as you need the proprietary r8168 driver to make your Ethernet work, you will have to reinstall it each time a kernel upgrade occurs.