Can't tether to Android smartphone internet via USB or hotspot

I can’t figure out how to tether a Tumbleweed-powered laptop to my Android smartphone’s internet connection, as I regularly did with Windows 7 and Linux Mint versions 17.* and 18.*.

If I turn on USB tethering in Android, the Tumbleweed laptop’s Network Manager icon changes to indicate a successful connection, and I’ll see a “You are now connected to Wired Connection (Number)” notification.

Unfortunately, this notification is misleading: pings and traceroutes get “Name or service not known” errors. I can’t go online.

Symptoms are the same when I instead try to connect by enabling “Wi-Fi hotspot” in Android. The laptop prompts me to enter the Wi-fi hotspot password, reports “Connection established,” shows the wi-fi signal icon … and gives the same “Name or service not known errors” on ping attempts. No internet.

Enabling USB debugging in Android (Lineage OS, successor to CyanogenMod) didn’t help. I experimented with a second Tumbleweed-powered laptop, with identical results.

I searched opensuse.org for related threads, and thought I saw a light at the end of the tunnel while reading Deano Ferrari’s tips in:

https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/513213-Cannot-access-internet-via-usb-tethering-on-KDE-5-Leap-42-1-form-Samsung-Galaxy-Note-5

I edited /etc/resolv.conf to point to openDNS nameservers. This time, after a ten second pause, ping delivered a different message:

“Temporary failure in name resolution.”

… but nothing else, and the system still wouldn’t go online.

I also tried following the steps at:

https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using

to change to Google’s DNS, without success.

FWIW, I can easily transfer files to and from the smartphone, simply by changing USB options from ‘charging’ to ‘file transfer.’

If I remember correctly, USB tethering in Linux Mint was pretty much ‘plug and play’ for both these laptops.

Troubleshooting tips will be appreciated!

Update: there may be an issue with the phone itself. >:( I’ll post again if sure that the issue is with the configuration of Linux on the computer, and not the configuration of Linux in Android.

Update #2: it was the phone, finally fixed via ADB shell. Case closed. Sorry for an unnecessary thread.

That is fine. It is always rewarding when you can solve a problem yourself.
And others can learn from it.

Enjoy.

Thanks, Henk. For the curious: I posted the gory details in Fraser Bell’s ‘Android and OpenSUSE’ thread in hardware:

https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/520356-Android-and-openSUSE-Who-is-connecting-and-how-are-you-connecting?p=2867830#post2867830