Symptoms: No Internet, Networking Icon at the top is gone, the settings gui shows no interfaces. ifconfig by itself shows the loopback interface and nothing else, but an ifconfig -a shows any and all interfaces including 2 usb to ethernet interfaces that were added on the fly when plugged in. Reboot did not help and the added interfaces though visible with an ifconfig -a, had no link light or connectivity. Incidentally, ip at the command line had the same results as infconfig and ifconfig -a. I found a doc that said use lshw -C network which gave the first clue as to how I could resolve this as the command showed that the ethernet connections were Disabled. Further Googling had me stumble across a simalar solution but I had to create a file /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/allow-unmanaged-devices.com with the contents unmanaged-devices=*,except:type:wifi,except:type:gsm,except:type:cdma,except:type:ethernet and restart networking but that didn't work. I started looking for other solutions and came across the one I listed here. I posted in hopes of helping someone else that may have had this issue. Clearly it has been going on for a while. My question is why must we override the network-manager thingy that was working fine for 6 months and through tons of updates and reboots? Do I/we just leave this like this forever? Is this the correct solution for this issue? If indeed this is the case, then why does Ubuntu 22.xx still ship with this? I am trying make the jump from windows. I have advised friends to try Ubuntu and I am the guy who they are going to call when this happens. Furthermore, as a fan of Open Source and Ubuntu I would like to see it succeed in gaining a significant foothold in the marketplace. However, issues like these are going to be big stumbling blocks for Ubuntu. Failure of all networking on a machine that a user depends on is going to leave a bad taste in that users mouth. No one that I have advised to consider running Ubuntu would be comfortable with a fix where they are editing files through a terminal session to get networking restarted.
So, to summarize, I had pending software updates and did a reboot, upon reboot, my networking interfaces disappeared. The solution that worked is to Edit 10-globally-managed-devices.conf with the values listed below. And my post here is a request and a comment:
- The request is if anyone knows why this happens if they would kindly point me to a whitepaper so I can understand what happened.
- The comment is that I am a fan of Ubuntu and would like to see it more prevalent in the marketplace. But without a more reliable solution that won't leave users high and dry, and no networking on a primary computer is indeed high and dry, Ubuntu will continue to be a fringe OS that doesn't enjoy wide spread adaptation by the masses due to its high maintenance. my .02
SOLUTION THAT WORKED WAS-
Edit file /usr/lib/NetworkManager/conf.d/10-globally-managed-devices.conf and change its content from :
[keyfile]
unmanaged-devices=*,except:type:wifi,except:type:wwan
To:
[keyfile]
unmanaged-devices=*,except:type:ethernet,except:type:wifi,except:type:wwan
And then run :
sudo service network-manager restart
But why do I have to do this? This was listed as an answer for v.17.04 but there doesn't seem to be an answer why this is happening.
This cost me 2 hours while I was working on something and man is that frustrating. I just don't get the why it keeps happening and the fix is to unmanage devices whatever that means?
