I have an old Dell XPS 1300 (x86_64-capable) laptop that came originally with Windows Vista pre-installed. Years ago I installed openSUSE alongside (I forget which version), double-boot. Last year I replaced Vista with Windows10 (which is slow, but it works); and last week I replaced openSUSE 13.2 with Leap 15.1, fresh install from DVD, still double-boot.
It’s all working, except for the onboard wired ethernet NIC under Leap 15.1. The wireless connection works fine, but the wired one doesn’t, even though NetworkManager tells me it’s “activated and connected”. While it might be activated, it isn’t connected.
According to hwinfo the NIC is a Marvell 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller, driver Sky2. I’ve always assigned it the static address 192.168.0.30, and I’ve kept to that in Leap 15.1 using NetworkManager. It’s on a small local LAN in the 192.168.0.x segment, which connects via ip forwarding through a Raspberry Pi4 to a 192.168.1.x segment with a cable Internet connection at 192.168.1.254.
This arrangement works with other computers on the local wired LAN. It also worked with the laptop booted to oS 13.2 before I changed to Leap 15.1; and it still does with the laptop booted to Win 10. So it seems the problem can’t be hardware or cabling, but must be something else in Leap 15.1.
The laptop can ping its own wired NIC at 192.168.0.30. But pinging other computers on the same segment such as the RPi’s LAN-facing address 192.168.0.1 produces only “Destination Host Unreachable”. Nor is the laptop pingable from other computers on the LAN.
# Here’s the output of ip route list:
default via 192.168.0.1 dev eth0 proto static metric 20100
192.168.0.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.0.30 metric 100
# ip addr show eth0 returns this:
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 00:21:9b:f6:6f:c1 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.0.30/24 brd 192.168.0.255 scope global noprefixroute eth0
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 fe80::4219:94f2:f6c9:877e/64 scope link noprefixroute
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
# ….and here is cat /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth0
BOOTPROTO='static'
BROADCAST=''
ETHTOOL_OPTIONS=''
IFPLUGD_PRIORITY='0'
IPADDR='192.168.0.30/24'
MTU=''
NAME='88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller'
NETWORK=''
REMOTE_IPADDR=''
STARTMODE='auto'
So, in summary, the laptop’s wired NIC accepts the address 192.168.0.30 in Win10 and Leap 15.1, and it works in Win10 but not in Leap 15.1. In the latter case NetworkManager says it’s activated, but it’s not connected; nor is it pingable other than from the laptop itself.
I can see nothing in the setup or the above code excerpts that says the configuration is wrong. I’ve tried it all with and without firewalld running; also with wicked instead of NetworkManager. Other Linux computers on the LAN are configured equivalently, and connect perfectly well. So does the laptop in Win 10 but not in Leap 15.1, so the problem can’t be hardware failure.
I’m flummoxed. Where do I look next? Anyone? Please?