Can connect only to my router. No other wifi possible.

[somethingcatchy]

Everything came back as OOB / default except the last one. I don't have a nm-dns-dnsmasq.conf file in /var/run, neither does my wife's machine. So this is probably something I've missed when building.

BTW, the file did not get created on my machine just now when I installed / reinstalled / dpkg-reconfigured dnsmasq. Is this a sign of a deeper issue / corruption? Or is this file generated by a plugin like network-manager-openvpn or network-manager-openvpn-gnome? If so can you give me the exact package name so I can DL it?

And, digging in my machine I've blown up DNS as it stands with what I did above. But, only DNS and not the whole network stack. I can connect to a resolved external host.

[somethingcatchy]

adam@adam-L502X:~$ cat /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


adam@adam-L502X:~$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
# Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8)
#     DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTEN
nameserver 127.0.0.1
adam@adam-L502X:~$ grep dnsmasq /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf
dns=dnsmasq
adam@adam-L502X:~$ cat /var/run/nm-dns-dnsmasq.conf
cat: /var/run/nm-dns-dnsmasq.conf: No such file or directory

Like I said: It all came back default execpt for the last one. That file does not exist on my machine. How does it get created and what creates it?

[papibe]

Try creating the file by yourself to see what happens.

You may try OpenDNS:

sudo bash -c 'echo "server=208.67.222.222" > /var/run/nm-dns-dnsmasq.conf'

Or Google DNS:

sudo bash -c 'echo "server=8.8.8.8" > /var/run/nm-dns-dnsmasq.conf'

Regards.

[somethingcatchy]

Thank you very, very much.

On first test that seems to have fixed the problems. I can resolve DNS now through my localhost. Dig, host and ping www.google.com all work now with dig showing my host as the name server. And the issue with sudo being slow to respond was also solved. (I didn't realize that it made a local server call.) And, an issue with Thunar has been resolved as well. It is now *quickly* resolving my local samba location in the side bar; rather than taking several minutes to "figure it out".

I need to do some testing with my virtual network and with wifi connections out in the world to see if this has fixed all of my DNS resolution issues. If so I'll be back in a few hours to mark the thread as solved and apply the repairs to my wife's machine as well.

If not I'll be asking more questions.

Thank's for the help!

[somethingcatchy]

OK, I didn't have to get very far in testing to hit the first snag: I still can't resolve DNS on wlan0.

If I have the cat5 from my router plugged in to eth0 I can resolve DNS / navigate the web.

If eth0 is attached to the router I can make a wlan0 / wifi connection from my host to my router.

If eth0 is not attached to the router via hard line I cannot connect my host via wlan0 to the router to establish a wifi connection.

This tells me that I am resolving DNS on eth0 but not resolving DNS on wlan0. (Yes, no, different issue?)

So, what configuration file am I missing for this one?

And, BTW, yes the router is set up to resolve DNS for its clients. And I have verified that it is working. We have a droid tablet that cannot resolve DNS locally and is set up by the manufacturer to rely on the gateway for DNS resolution. It is navigating the web and connecting to the router with no issue.

[somethingcatchy]

Strike that last post. I've touched tons of stuff trying to fix this problem. I just realized that I had changed some of the connection parameters in the config file of my wifi home connection. When I fixed them I was able to connect on wlan0 without eth0 plugged in with no issue.

So now I'm off to do more testing.

[papibe]

Check if there's a custom setting on your wireless connection. You could go to

'Network Connections' -> 'Wireless' tab -> wlan0 or the name of your wireless network.

Alternatively, you co go to this directory:

/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections

And check the content of the file there. It should be name something like "Wireless-Network-name connection 1" or similar. For instance:

sudo more /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/Wireless-Network-name\ connection\ 1

Regards.

[somethingcatchy]

Two steps forward and one step back:

I can only connect to my router on eth0 or wlan0 if I mark them as "connect automatically" in the Network Connections GUI control panel and then reboot my machine?

[papibe]

When an interface is set not to connect automatically (field uncheck), an entry is set on /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf.

It has this format:

no-auto-default=63:D3:DA:15:A5:BC,

Where the string is the MAC address of the interface.

May be the 'Network Connections' tool is not properly writing those changes to the file? Or settings are not being read at boot? Permissions? (here it has 644 permissions).

Just some thoughts.
Regards.

[somethingcatchy]

644 = rw owner /r users in group owner /r everyone? (root:root) If so then it's correct.

My eth0 / LAN MAC was set to no-auto-default, even though it is currently checked for auto connect. So I removed it.

And my wife's LAN or wlan MAC got copied over to no-auto-default when I extracted this build from her system with remastersys. So I removed it.

And my wlan0 was not set for no-auto-default even though I unchecked the GUI box, so I added it.

Rebooted and no difference.

(It appears those values are not being written and even setting them manually is not making a difference?)

So I took no-auto-default out completely and deleted both the wired and wireless confg profiles in Network Connections GUI.

Then I rebooted and pluged in eth0 after logging in. The system auto configured a new auto-connect profile. But could not actually connect to it until I had rebooted again. I also couldn't connect to wlan0 either until after reboot.

Even

sudo service network-manager stop
sudo service resolvconf stop
sudo service dnsmasq stop
sudo service dnsmasq start
sudo service resolvconf start
sudo service network-manager start

made no difference, only a reboot will establish the connections.

I think both connections are timing out. They request an IP address for ~60 seconds and then disconnect.

Is there a command (or is one needed) to tell the dnsmasq network manager plugin to run in the background as an always on daemon? I ask because pstree shows dnsmasq running, but it is forking from init; not network-manager.

And / or should I pin hole my firewall to / from localhost on port 53 to let dnsmasq resolve a connection after boot? I ask because even though webmin runs as a local server I had to pinhole the service to be able to log in to the localhost.

BTW, I'm not sure if this means anything or not but I still don't have a nm-dns-dnsmasq.conf in var/run even though

sudo bash -c 'echo "server=208.67.222.222" /var/run/nm-dns-dnsmasq.conf

caused DNS resolution to start working (at least at boot). And, if I try to physically create the file in the root GUI it will disappear. As a matter of fact I just ran a comprehensive search that said that there is no file by that name anywhere on my system?