This is an Acer Aspire one laptop, with a 32 bit CPU and Debian 12.7. Whenever I install Linux on it, the Internet works for about one day. And when I boot it up the next day, it just stops working. This is the case for WiFi, Ethernet and USB tethering via Android.

After running networkctl it gave me this:

I can ping 8.8.8.8 in this state, but not gnu.org. I can’t open websites in Firefox either.

Then I ran “sudo systemctl start systemd-networkd”. The networkctl output changed but everything worked exactly as the above two images. Couldn’t open websites still.

Yesterday everything was working perfectly

Edit: Thanks to @[email protected] and @[email protected] I finally have internet access on my 12-year old e-waste!

  • nanook
    20•2 months ago

    Fact that you can still ping but not resolve means your name servers aren’t set right.

      • @[email protected]
        10•2 months ago

        Update /etc/systemd/resolved.conf and add some DNS servers (in this example, 1.1.1.1 is CloudFlare, and 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 are Google but you can use your preferred DNS servers.)

        [Resolve]
DNS=1.1.1.1 8.8.8.8
FallbackDNS=8.8.4.4

        Restart system resolved:

        service systemd-resolved restart

        Run resolvectl status (or systemd-resolve --status in older versions of systemd) to see if the settings took.

        If they don’t take after a reboot, there’s something else going on.

      • nanook
        4•2 months ago

        @maliciousonion You can go into network manager and specify different working name servers, you can cat /etc/resolv.conf to make sure it is sane.

  • ddhEnglish
    16•2 months ago

    0 days since it was DNS

  • nanook
    3•2 months ago

    If worse comes to worse, you can always just remove the symlink of /etc/resolv.conf which presently will point to something in /run/systemd, and replace it with a static file with known good name servers in it. You’ll lose having a DNS cache but at least your machine will function.

  • @[email protected]
    -3•2 months ago

    Why are you using networkd instead of networkmanager on a desktop? The two don’t work together.

    Anyway, it looks like a DNS problem. You can manually specify DNS servers (like 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) in whatever network management you’re using.

    Alternatively you can edit /etc/hosts (I meant /etc/resolv.conf obviously) and then make it immutable (chattr +i /etc/hosts) to prevent changes.

    • @[email protected]
      8•2 months ago

      Why are you using networkd instead of networkmanager on a desktop?

      What a weird question. Networkd works anywhere systemd works, why whould desktops be any different.

      It’s the same as asking someone “why are you using systemd-boot instead of grub?” Because I like systemd boot better and it’s easier to configure. Same with networkd, configuration is stupid simple, I have installed it on my work machine even.

      As for op: since you can manually ping ip addresses and the issue seems to be time-based, could it be that your machine is somehow not renegotiating a dhcp lease?

      • @[email protected]OPEnglish
        2•2 months ago

        Well the machine’s time is off by a few hours after I power it off for a night. So the time is incorrect right now. This might explain why it suddenly stops when I wake up and reopen it a day after installation. Should I manually set the correct time to fix it?

        • @[email protected]
          3•2 months ago

          If the time is off by that much after being powered off, this tells me two things:

          1. Your RTC battery is very likely dead. Should be simple to replace, it would be on the motherboard but then again accessing it might be a little tricky on a laptop
          2. NTP is probably not set up, or set up incorrectly. It should automatically sync the time on boot

          An incorrect clock can absolutely cause network issues, so I would bet that’s what is causing you trouble