Problems with internet connection

Hi,

I face an Internet connection failure from my OpenSuse 11.2… All began with the tentative of installing a VPN connection, using KVpnc (which bugged), vpnc and the Network manager. I made several attempts, which all failed and probably messed something along the way. I assume that it is not a big issue; my eth0 and wlan are apparently functional (I get connection with the router; with both media), but still I cannot get connected to the web (firefox, thunderbird skype and all others show me that the connection is not working). I outline that the router is OK, both in ethernet and wireless; I write this post from my windows partition.

As a starting point, I post the results of ifconfig and dhclient eth0:

ifconfig

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:16:D3:8C:31:1B
inet adr:192.168.1.3 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Masque:255.255.255.0
adr inet6: fe80::216:d3ff:fe8c:311b/64 Scope:Lien
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:22 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:326 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 lg file transmission:1000
RX bytes:2380 (2.3 Kb) TX bytes:29084 (28.4 Kb)
Interruption:27 Adresse de base:0xa000

lo Link encap:Boucle locale
inet adr:127.0.0.1 Masque:255.0.0.0
adr inet6: ::1/128 Scope:Hôte
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:160 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:160 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 lg file transmission:0
RX bytes:10680 (10.4 Kb) TX bytes:10680 (10.4 Kb)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:16:44:7D:D6:CD
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 lg file transmission:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

wmaster0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-16-44-7D-D6-CD-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
UP RUNNING MTU:0 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 lg file transmission:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

dhclient eth0

Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.1.2p1
Copyright 2004-2009 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit DHCP | Internet Systems Consortium

Listening on LPF/eth0/00:16:d3:8c:31:1b
Sending on LPF/eth0/00:16:d3:8c:31:1b
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 2
DHCPOFFER from 192.168.1.1
DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK from 192.168.1.1
bound to 192.168.1.3 – renewal in 1783 seconds.

Any suggestions are welcome, thank you in advance for your help,
More specifically, knowing where to search would be a very good starting point for me (i.e. config files that matter, YAST panels that can be helpfull, etc).
Nils

You have a connection on the wired interface and none on the wireless interface. It looks to me like you could use the “Yast” method → “traditional method with ifup”. Have a look at this pictorial tutorial:
Configure a network card in Suse/openSUSE 11.x for Internet Access & wifi.

You can fix the wired connection and/or the wireless connection. It’s not advisable to run both connections concurrently. I usually get them both going on my computer and then turn wireless off (because wired if faster than wireless for me).

Thank you for your answer;
I give it a try ASAP. Still, no connection with the WLAN is explained by the fact that I can switch between both of them, at that time my WLAN was off. But the issue remains the same, whatever network device is connected. I also agree with the fact that wire is better than WLAN. I keep you informed. Thanks again.

Hi,

I tried the tutorial that you proposed; it did not worked either. However, I found this:

####### /sbin/route -n
Table de routage IP du noyau
Destination Passerelle Genmask Indic Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 1 0 0 eth0
127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0
I don’t know if that helps…

And more interesting:
####### cat /etc/resolv.conf
#@VPNC_GENERATED@ – this file is generated by vpnc

and will be overwritten by vpnc

as long as the above mark is intact

/etc/resolv.conf file autogenerated by netconfig!

Before you change this file manually, consider to define the

static DNS configuration using the following variables in the

/etc/sysconfig/network/config file:

NETCONFIG_DNS_STATIC_SEARCHLIST

NETCONFIG_DNS_STATIC_SERVERS

NETCONFIG_DNS_FORWARDER

or disable DNS configuration updates via netconfig by setting:

NETCONFIG_DNS_POLICY=’’

See also the netconfig(8) manual page and other documentation.

Note: Manual change of this file disables netconfig too, but

may get lost when this file contains comments or empty lines

only, the netconfig settings are same with settings in this

file and in case of a “netconfig update -f” call.

Please remove (at least) this line when you modify the file!

nameserver 130.125.5.100
nameserver 130.125.6.100
search unine.ch


Here, these two IP numbers + unine.ch correspond to the server that I was trying to connect through the VPN. My knowledge about Linux is limited, but apparently that vpnc has rewritten this file (as stated) and replaced the IP adresses of my ISP by these ones. As a result, my PC tries to contact 130.12.5.100 instead of my router to get internet access. Do you think that this scenario could be possible? If yes, how can I correct this file? Second question; these IP numbers should instead be the ones of my router right? If yes, how can I find these numbers? By logging into the router?

Thanks for your help,
Nils

rotfl!

Me again; this is fixed! I just hope that the changes will be permanent. The bug was as I thought:
vpnc had changed the /etc/resolv.conf file. In there, he erased the IP address of my router, and replaced it with the IP of my University. Thus, my PC had no way to connect the router again and the internet connection was down.

To fix it:
sudo vim /etc/resolv.conf

I removed all the spurious IP addresses of that file, and replaced them by the following line:
nameserver 192.168.1.1

which gives the standard IP number of the router. That number can be found into your router (when login in it as an admin); apparently it is also quite standard.

Let’s see if I did not messed other things while trying to fix this :X
Thanks for the help,
Nils