Browsers no longer connect

openSUSE 13.1 64bit KDE

All of a sudden none of my browsers on my netbook will connect to any address. Not even an IP. Skype connects normally, and I can ping IP addresses but not web pages. It reports “ping : unknown host www.google.com”. I haven’t been fooling around with YaST, but I suspect I have accidentally blocked a port. I use Network Manager it and reports that I am connected both with wire and wireless connections.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Start by sharing your routing table, when you think you should be connected

ip address
ip route

BTW, are you sure the issue is not with your router or service provider perhaps? Try power-cycling the router.

Your wording is a bit vague :wink:

Nobody can ping web pages. A system can (try to) ping another system. And pinging is not influenced by the availablity of a listening port for any other service (like 80 for HTTP).

But when, using whatever going over the net program, it says “unknown host”, there is a problem with name resolving. In other words, you gave it a host/domain name and it cannot be resolved to an IP address. DNS problem.

You can check name resolving with e.g.

henk@boven:~> host www.google.com
www.google.com has address 173.194.65.99
www.google.com has address 173.194.65.104
www.google.com has address 173.194.65.106
www.google.com has address 173.194.65.103
www.google.com has address 173.194.65.147
www.google.com has address 173.194.65.105
www.google.com has IPv6 address 2a00:1450:4013:c00::6a
henk@boven:~>

BTW why do you not post what you do by copy/paste from the terminal window between CODE tags here. Now we have to assume that your story telling is the truth and nothing but the truth and the complete truth, instead of that we can simply see and interprete what you saw :(.

So please show us the ping to an IP address that succeeded. And more that proves what you say.

All of a sudden none of my browsers on my netbook will connect to any address. Not even an IP. Skype connects normally, and I can ping IP addresses but not web pages.

You were a bit unclear as Henk mentioned. If you can ping an internet IP address successfully, then maybe it is just a DNS issue.

Check

grep -i name /etc/resolv.conf

Thanks for the speedy response.

ion@linux-xzlw:~> ip address

1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN 
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: enp3s0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state DOWN qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:22:15:6d:63:c1 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: wlp1s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:15:af:d2:97:50 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.1.65/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global wlp1s0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::215:afff:fed2:9750/64 scope link 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever


ion@linux-xzlw:~> ip route
default via 192.168.1.1 dev wlp1s0  proto static 
192.168.1.0/24 dev wlp1s0  proto kernel  scope link  src 192.168.1.65  metric 9 
ion@linux-xzlw:~> 



I power-recycled the router. I also include a listing of my /etc/resolv.conf files…

My /etc/resolv.conf is blank.
My /etc/resolv.conf.OSPprb is blank
My /etc/resolv.conf.netconfig is search site                                 
                                nameserver 192.168.1.1
My /etc/resolv.conf.Zna36Y is search site

Furthermore I booted from a backup openSUSE 13.1 SSD and was able to connect normally with no problems.

Henk, I was being careless. Sorry to make diagnosis more difficult.

That is allright, but where are your run statements now? I asked for showing

host www/google.com

and the pings you say you do.
deano_ferrari asked for

grep -i name /etc/resolv.conf

And that’s probably your problem. It should contain your DNS server(s).

Run:

sudo /sbin/netconfig update -f

That should “fix” it.

Or rename /etc/resolv.conf.netconfig to /etc/resolv.conf, that one looks like it would be correct.

My /etc/resolv.conf.OSPprb is blank
My /etc/resolv.conf.netconfig is search site
nameserver 192.168.1.1
My /etc/resolv.conf.Zna36Y is search site

You can remove those, they are just backups/temporary files.

To set the record straight,

linux-xzlw:/home/ion # host www.google.com;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
linux-xzlw:/home/ion # 
ion@linux-xzlw:~> grep -i name /etc/resolv.conf
ion@linux-xzlw:~> 

I am working under difficult conditions. I am presently in a rural community in Greece where my wireless Internet connection cuts in and out periodically. Not to mention that due to an electrical rain storm there have been power cuts. I have to walk to a nearby cafe to use their shared and slow computer. I do appreciate your assistance.

sudo /sbin/netconfig update -f

solved the problem. But the bigger question in my mind is how that could possibly have changed without any interference on my part. Admittedly it’s a small keyboard and I may have inadvertently pressed the “Fn” key but surely I should have received some kind of warning if that occurred.

In any case thank you very much for the help.

The file was empty.
But why I don’t know.

Might be because of a crash or unclean shutdown, maybe even filesystem corruption.
Or some program overwrote it.

The thing is that netconfig doesn’t change the file any more when it was modified by something/somebody else (that’s why you had to specify the -f option, to force it to re-create the file). That’s by design, because it shouldn’t overwrite conscious changes made by the administrator.

Probably unclean shutdown with the power failures here. Thank you for the explanation. I learn a little more with every failure I experience.

I understand that you want to know the real cause. But as wolfi323 says, that is diifficult to find. In the past we had spme cases of changes to the file made (but not completely emptying it!), but if I remember correctly it was never nailed down to cause (but updates were accused).

In any case, as long as you do not work as root, destroying it yourself is by any means out of the question. That is as long as the permissions are correct:

henk@boven:~> ls -l /etc/resolv.conf 
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 887 17 jan  2014 /etc/resolv.conf
henk@boven:~

On 2014-09-27 14:46, hcvv wrote:
>
> I understand that you want to know the real cause. But as wolfi323 says,
> that is diifficult to find. In the past we had spme cases of changes to
> the file made (but not completely emptying it!), but if I remember
> correctly it was never nailed down to cause (but updates were accused).

If using automatic networking (ie, dhcp), it is possible that there is a
transient “misunderstanding” with the router, and the dns data is
cleared as a result.


Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)

A common cause if your machine mobile and moves from network to network.
My first reaction always is to try to re-acquire DNS by restarting the network

systemctl restart network

If that doesn’t work, then I sometimes specify a widely available DNS on the Internet instead of letting DHCP assign an ISP DNS.

A little off-topic but I see this also sometimes in virtualization, it’s just another layer of networking.

TSU