Score:0

No networking after upgrade to 20.04-2 5.11.0-25

kr flag

I finally took the leap of updating after a few months stuck due to an NVidia driver bug and now I have no networking.

I'm typing in a phone so excuse my formatting.

lspci -nn | egrep '0200|0280'

Shows my Qualcomm Atheros Gigabit Ethernet Controller

ifconfig -a

Just shows lo, no eth0

I ran some other command which I found somewhere else which escapes me, but that showed my network adapter as...

*-UNCLAIMED

Reading about this this seems to be a driver issue but all solutions I have found so far involve running...

sudo apt-get xxxxx

I have no network. My Bluetooth as also disappeared. My WiFi adapter is gone too. I have no way to get this machine on a network at all.

How on earth can I get it back?

I tried rebooting into the earlier kernel and was greeted with a black screen so that's a non-starter.

I have tried...

sudo network-manager restart

(This does nothing).

I am at a loss.

user535733 avatar
cn flag
Boot a LiveUSB. Then review your logs to see if your system can be salvaged.
kr flag
I've managed to boot with a USB fine. How do I know if my system can be salvaged?
user535733 avatar
cn flag
Review your apt logs: See what was upgraded, see if anything was deleted. Review your syslog from the most recent boot, look for messages about your network hardware, look for general network messages. Look for *clues*.
kr flag
I'm pretty new to Linux. I don't really know what I'd be looking for or even where. From what I can see it seems that my network drivers seem to have been removed but I can't figure out how I can re-install them without a network connection.
user535733 avatar
cn flag
Then it's time to back up your data and reinstall Ubuntu.
kr flag
If that's the solution then I'm not sure I'll bother. If the system upgrade process will quite happily completely trash my machine not once, but twice and I end up having to rebuild all the time it's not worth the hassle. I've just spent weeks getting my system customised just how I want it.
kr flag
Is there no way to just repair the OS like there is in Windows? I always thought that OS isolation was one of the key strengths of Linux?
user535733 avatar
cn flag
Well, of course there is. Windows obfuscates and calls it "repair". It's not a repair. It's a reinstall. We call it "reinstall". A reinstall need not reformat nor overwrite your data. It will destroy your data if you choose the wrong settings, so a backup before you start seems wise.
kr flag
I literally just installed the recommended package in Software Updater and rebooted when told to. It did tell me it wanted to removes some things. i feel telling it to go away at that point would have been a good idea. Wish I knew about Timeshift beforehand! I had this last time I updated because NVidia borked their driver update and broke Display port so my experience of an LTS hasn't been great so far.
kr flag
Looking at the live CD O can't find an option that will reinstall the OS but leave the apps alone. My home directory will be OK as it's on a separate drive but having to reinstall all my apps will be a real pain.
user535733 avatar
cn flag
Non-format reinstall: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1073252/reinstalling-ubuntu-without-formatting-home
kr flag
Thanks. Here we go...
Score:0
kr flag

It seems that, in this situation, the only option is a fresh install. That being said, what the comments above helped me with, is that - as long as your /home directory is on a different drive (which mine was) you can do a fresh install straight over the top with minimal loss.

I had a script to run all my app installs back up again so I just ran that and then I was good.

I would recommend to anyone to keep your apps and other relevant changes scripted up in a recovery bash script so if you need to reinstall then it's almost totally painless.

In the end the reinstall only half fixed my setup and Ubuntu still wasn't playing nicely - after 2 crashes I switched distro to Manjaro - all rosy so far (except this pacman thing is a bit weird when you're used to apt!)

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