Sporadic loss of wired ethernet after installing updates after ~Jan-06-2021

[jdjenkin]

Sometime around January 7-15, Mint updates seem to have caused my wired internet connection to stop functioning at least once a day, i.e. neither firefox nor thunderbird would connect to the internet after having worked perfectly for minutes to hours. Rebooting temporarily fixed the problem, but after another few minutes to a few hours, the connection would fail again. Restoring my system to its January 6 state using Timeshift completely solves the problem - no internet failures for days. I repeated the experiment of reverting to Jan. 6 three times over the last two weeks and it worked each time. Both version 20 (with updates post~1/6) and version 20.1 fail.

Is this a known problem with software updates after about Jan. 6?

Below is the current state of the machine (which works fine) which I restored to January 6 state yesterday and have not done any software updates since then, since I expect they will cause the problem again:

Code: Select all

System:
  Kernel: 5.4.0-59-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 9.3.0 
  Desktop: Cinnamon 4.6.7 wm: muffin 4.6.3 dm: LightDM 1.30.0 
  Distro: Linux Mint 20 Ulyana base: Ubuntu 20.04 focal 
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: ASUS product: N/A v: N/A serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: ASUSTeK model: PRIME B550M-A v: Rev X.0x serial: <filter> 
  UEFI: American Megatrends v: 0608 date: 06/15/2020 
CPU:
  Topology: 12-Core model: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Zen 
  L2 cache: 6144 KiB 
  flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm 
  bogomips: 182044 
  Speed: 2193 MHz min/max: 2200/3800 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz): 
  1: 2195 2: 2194 3: 2195 4: 2196 5: 2193 6: 2194 7: 2196 8: 2186 9: 2189 
  10: 2193 11: 2188 12: 2195 13: 2194 14: 2190 15: 2196 16: 2194 17: 2195 
  18: 2196 19: 2196 20: 2194 21: 2200 22: 2191 23: 2195 24: 2202 
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA GK208B [GeForce GT 710] vendor: ASUSTeK driver: nouveau 
  v: kernel bus ID: 0b:00.0 chip ID: 10de:128b 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.9 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa 
  resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: NV106 v: 4.3 Mesa 20.2.6 direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: NVIDIA GK208 HDMI/DP Audio vendor: ASUSTeK driver: snd_hda_intel 
  v: kernel bus ID: 0b:00.1 chip ID: 10de:0e0f 
  Device-2: AMD Starship/Matisse HD Audio vendor: ASUSTeK 
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 0d:00.4 chip ID: 1022:1487 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.4.0-59-generic 
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  vendor: ASUSTeK driver: r8169 v: kernel port: f000 bus ID: 0a:00.0 
  chip ID: 10ec:8168 
  IF: enp10s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
  IF-ID-1: tun0 state: unknown speed: 10 Mbps duplex: full mac: N/A 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 931.51 GiB used: 318.69 GiB (34.2%) 
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: PNY model: CS3030 1TB SSD size: 931.51 GiB 
  speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: <filter> rev: CS303226 scheme: GPT 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 915.40 GiB used: 318.69 GiB (34.8%) fs: ext4 
  dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 47.6 C mobo: N/A gpu: nouveau temp: 42 C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list 
  1: deb http://packages.linuxmint.com ulyana main upstream import backport #id:linuxmint_main
  2: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal main restricted universe multiverse
  3: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates main restricted universe multiverse
  4: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse
  5: deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-security main restricted universe multiverse
  6: deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ focal partner
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/strukturag-libheif-focal.list 
  1: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/strukturag/libheif/ubuntu focal main
Info:
  Processes: 384 Uptime: 21h 51m Memory: 15.60 GiB used: 2.57 GiB (16.5%) 
  Init: systemd v: 245 runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 9.3.0 alt: 9 Shell: bash 
  v: 5.0.17 running in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.0.38

[jdjenkin]

After further troubleshooting, the problem appears to be caused by ExpressVPN. After restoring the system to its January 6 state, I can accept all Linux software updates through today without the problem occurring, but if I accept ExpressVPN updates, the problem resumes. ExpressVPN support provided a workaround that stops the problem for me - run the command "expressvpn preferences set force_vpn_dns true".

[mikeflan]

Thanks for keeping us informed. Sorry we couldn't help you.
I use wired networks exclusively, so I am very interested in this issue.

[jdjenkin]

You're welcome. By the way, I wrote the wrong command in my last post. The correct command is "expressvpn preferences set force_vpn_dns false". The default is "true". Changing it to "false" stopped the problem.