Hi,
I’m hoping someone might be able to suggest what went wrong with my networking, so I can continue using OpenSUSE! I’ve been running version 11.3 with KDE (64 bit) for a few months now (dual booting with Ubuntu); everything had been working fine until about a week ago - the only issue I had was that some internet-based things seemed a bit slower than in Ubuntu.
Anyway, after the last set of updates I installed (around Jan. 6th; there was a kernel update and a few other things. I’m not sure where to locate the history in YaST) I lost functionality of all internet-based programs, with the exception of Firefox. (I’m using Firefox in openSUSE right now to access this forum, for example.) Although I can browse the web just fine, I can’t use Thunderbird to check email, the weather and comics plasma applets don’t work, and the system can no longer connect to the software repositories.
I didn’t change any settings (to my knowledge), but somehow internet access is being denied to most of my system! Any suggestions?
Hi,
I’m hoping someone might be able to suggest what went wrong with my networking, so I can continue using OpenSUSE! I’ve been running version 11.3 with KDE (64 bit) for a few months now (dual booting with Ubuntu); everything had been working fine until about a week ago - the only issue I had was that some internet-based things seemed a bit slower than in Ubuntu.
Anyway, after the last set of updates I installed (around Jan. 6th; there was a kernel update and a few other things. I’m not sure where to locate the history in YaST) I lost functionality of all internet-based programs, with the exception of Firefox. (I’m using Firefox in openSUSE right now to access this forum, for example.) Although I can browse the web just fine, I can’t use Thunderbird to check email, the weather and comics plasma applets don’t work, and the system can no longer connect to the software repositories.
I didn’t change any settings (to my knowledge), but somehow internet access is being denied to most of my system! Any suggestions?
When you say Firefox works, then there are just a lot of things that have to be working. I wonder if you might start YaST / Security and Users / Firewall and turn off your filewall just long enough to see if that might be the cause. Another thing you could do in in the same section is in the User and Group Management. Why not create a new user, log out as you, log in as that new user and see if that makes any different. If the Firewall makes a difference, it might mean some problem with the Firewall. If a new user make any difference, it might be a corrupted setting in your old identity.
Hi, thanks for the reply.
I tried your suggestions, but with no success. I turned off the firewall, but still could not access the internet except through Firefox - software updates still failed, Thunderbird could not reach any mail servers, etc. I also tried adding a new user (prior to adding a test account this was a single-user setup with automatic login, and I didn’t do any tinkering with the settings other than some GUI tweaks). When I log in using the new account, not even Firefox works - there is no internet at all.
This is very strange!
Try manually setting the DNS servers for your internet connection
if you don’t know the IPs of the name servers of your ISP, use Google’s free offering 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4
Hi again,
OK, on a hunch, I managed to come up with a solution; namely, disabling IPv6 globally.
I unchecked the Enable IPv6 box in the network settings, rebooted as required and everything seems to be working properly now.
It occurred to me that I had disabled IPv6 in Firefox awhile ago hoping that it would speed things up a bit (pages were very sluggish to load compared with Ubuntu when I first started using openSUSE).
However this still leaves me somewhat confused (partly because I don’t really understand things!) as to why it was suddenly necessary to take this step when things had been working fine with IPv6 enabled up to now. Also, since my understanding is that we’ve pretty much run out of room with IPv4, so presumably there will be some time in the near future when I will want to have IPv6 enabled!
I spoke a little bit too soon - I still can’t access any mail servers using Thunderbird. But with IPv6 disabled I was able to run software update, my weather applet is working again, and I’m caught up on the all the comic strips I missed while the comics applet wasn’t working. (I probably shouldn’t admit to it but I was booting openSUSE at least once a day just to read comic strips! There’s no decent equivalent in Gnome and I didn’t like Kubuntu when I tried it.)
To caf4926, I tried your suggestion earlier but without success. (I think you made the same suggestion on another thread for someone who couldn’t access the software repos.)
On Tue January 18 2011 11:06 pm, dsfitzpatrick wrote:
>
> Hi again,
> OK, on a hunch, I managed to come up with a solution; namely, disabling
> IPv6 globally.
> I unchecked the Enable IPv6 box in the network settings, rebooted as
> required and everything seems to be working properly now.
> It occurred to me that I had disabled IPv6 in Firefox awhile ago hoping
> that it would speed things up a bit (pages were -very- sluggish to load
> compared with Ubuntu when I first started using openSUSE).
> However this still leaves me somewhat confused (partly because I don’t
> really understand things!) as to why it was suddenly necessary to take
> this step when things had been working fine with IPv6 enabled up to now.
> Also, since my understanding is that we’ve pretty much run out of room
> with IPv4, so presumably there will be some time in the near future when
> I will want to have IPv6 enabled!
>
>
dsfitzpatrick;
By the time IPv6 is needed, routers and DNS servers will be able to handle
IPv6 request. Many consumer level routers now in service seem to be unable
to handle IPv6 and ISP often do not support IPv6. At sometime this will be
required, but it may be 20 years in the future, depending on your location in
the world.
P. V.
“We’re all in this together, I’m pulling for you.” Red Green
Since I’m still using Ubuntu as my primary OS, I installed openSUSE without a bootloader so that I could continue to use Ubuntu’s Grub2 - so my guess is that to change the boot parameters I need to edit the grub.conf file in Ubuntu.
In any case, I was able to get things working by running YaST, going to the Global Options tab in Network Settings, and unchecking Enable IPv6, which required a reboot (so perhaps this accomplishes the same as editing the boot options). That was enough to fix any web-enabled plasma applets, as well as access to the software repositories. To get Thunderbird working I still had to go into its Config Editor and manually disable IPv6 for Thunderbird.
It still seems odd that this suddenly became a problem when it had been working just fine; maybe my ISP changed something without warning?
In any case, I was able to get things working by running YaST, going to the Global Options tab in Network Settings, and unchecking Enable IPv6, which required a reboot (so perhaps this accomplishes the same as editing the boot options). That was enough to fix any web-enabled plasma applets, as well as access to the software repositories. To get Thunderbird working I still had to go into its Config Editor and manually disable IPv6 for Thunderbird. It still seems odd that this suddenly became a problem when it had been working just fine; maybe my ISP changed something without warning?
Probably your ISP did not change anything. But you did re-enable IPv6 with the kernel update (overwriting the old menu.lst). That’s why my recommendation is to disable IPv6 by adding
(I probably shouldn’t admit to it but I was booting openSUSE at least once a day just to read comic strips! There’s no decent equivalent in Gnome and I didn’t like Kubuntu when I tried it.)
Good that it’s going though