I keep needing to use timeshift to restore my networking ability

[DrPhill]

I am running LMDE with XFCE. I do not understand network troubleshooting very well, and when I have no network I cannot google answersexcept on my tiny phone..... very irritating. My laptop runs fine for a few boots, and then I will boot and networking will not happen. As far as I can tell the system is running (my conky shows small amount of traffic up and down)and I can see 'LOWER_UP' in the result of 'ip addr'. (The one below was taken with network working though, as was working so may be useless)

If I ping bbc.co.uk it says that the address could not be found. So it may be a DNS problem? How would I prove that?and how would I cure it?

Any help gratefully received. I am happy to 'tinker' a bit with my system. I am happy to be given instructions for things to do next time it happens.

Since it is working now (having restored yesterday's timeshift) it cannot be drivers or configurations.

More info:
I swap between my home wifi, my home ethernet cable, and my works wifi but I have not spotted a correlation with the internet problems.
I run without a swap partition and swappiness set to 0 as 32M ramis plenty for my needs (hence warning in inxi)

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drphill@drphill:~$ ip addr
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: enx0023561c4760: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 00:23:56:1c:47:60 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.1.46/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global noprefixroute enx0023561c4760
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::376a:654:61ca:aff2/64 scope link noprefixroute 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: wlp0s20f3: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 98:af:65:1b:20:10 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.1.89/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global noprefixroute wlp0s20f3
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::2429:c543:fecc:151c/64 scope link noprefixroute 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

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drphill@drphill:~$ inxi -Fxxxrz
System:
  Kernel: 5.10.0-15-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.1 
  Desktop: Xfce 4.16.0 tk: Gtk 3.24.24 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm4 
  dm: LightDM 1.26.0 Distro: LMDE 5 Elsie base: Debian 11.2 bullseye 
Machine:
  Type: Convertible System: Dell product: XPS 13 7390 2-in-1 v: N/A 
  serial: <filter> Chassis: type: 31 serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: Dell model: 05M9KH v: A03 serial: <filter> UEFI: Dell v: 1.7.1 
  date: 12/28/2020 
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 34.2 Wh condition: 40.5/50.0 Wh (81%) volts: 8.5/7.6 
  model: SMP DELL NN6M885 type: Li-poly serial: <filter> status: Charging 
CPU:
  Info: Quad Core model: Intel Core i7-1065G7 bits: 64 type: MT MCP 
  arch: Ice Lake rev: 5 L2 cache: 8 MiB 
  flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx 
  bogomips: 23961 
  Speed: 1175 MHz min/max: 400/3900 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1175 2: 1100 
  3: 1170 4: 1149 5: 1161 6: 1111 7: 1157 8: 1202 
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Iris Plus Graphics G7 vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel 
  bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:8a52 class ID: 0300 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: modesetting 
  unloaded: fbdev,vesa resolution: 1: 1920x1080~60Hz 2: 1920x1080~60Hz 
  s-dpi: 96 
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel Iris Plus Graphics (ICL GT2) 
  v: 4.6 Mesa 20.3.5 direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Image Signal Processor vendor: Dell driver: N/A 
  bus ID: 00:05.0 chip ID: 8086:8a19 class ID: 0480 
  Device-2: Intel Ice Lake-LP Smart Sound Audio vendor: Dell 
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 00:1f.3 chip ID: 8086:34c8 
  class ID: 0403 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.10.0-15-amd64 
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Killer Wi-Fi 6 AX1650i 160MHz Wireless Network Adapter 
  vendor: Rivet Networks driver: iwlwifi v: kernel port: 4000 
  bus ID: 00:14.3 chip ID: 8086:34f0 class ID: 0280 
  IF: wlp0s20f3 state: up mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: ASIX AX88179 Gigabit Ethernet type: USB driver: ax88179_178a 
  bus ID: 2-3.3.1:4 chip ID: 0b95:1790 class ID: ff00 serial: <filter> 
  IF: enx0023561c4760 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus ID: 3-10:4 
  chip ID: 8087:0026 class ID: e001 
  Report: ID: hci0 state: up running pscan iscan bt-v: 3.0 lmp-v: 5.2 
  sub-v: 2279 hci-v: 5.2 rev: 2279 address: <filter> 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 982.84 GiB used: 105.17 GiB (10.7%) 
  ID-1: /dev/mmcblk0 vendor: SanDisk model: SL32G size: 28.97 GiB 
  rotation: SSD serial: <filter> scheme: MBR 
  ID-2: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Toshiba model: KBG40ZPZ1T02 NVMe KIOXIA 1024GB 
  size: 953.87 GiB speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 rotation: SSD serial: <filter> 
  rev: 10400104 temp: 34.9 C scheme: GPT 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 47.76 GiB used: 11.85 GiB (24.8%) fs: ext4 
  dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 252 MiB used: 11.1 MiB (4.4%) fs: vfat 
  dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1 
  ID-3: /home size: 243.81 GiB used: 26.12 GiB (10.7%) fs: ext4 
  dev: /dev/nvme0n1p7 
Swap:
  Alert: No Swap data was found. 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 42.0 C mobo: N/A 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 0 fan-2: 0 
Repos:
  Packages: 2390 apt: 2385 flatpak: 5 
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list 
  1: deb https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/packages.linuxmint.com/packages elsie main upstream import backport
  2: deb http://debian.mirrors.uk2.net/debian/ bullseye main contrib non-free
  3: deb http://debian.mirrors.uk2.net/debian/ bullseye-updates main contrib non-free
  4: deb http://security.debian.org/ bullseye-security main contrib non-free
  5: deb http://debian.mirrors.uk2.net/debian/ bullseye-backports main contrib non-free
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/protonvpn-stable.list 
  1: deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/protonvpn-stable-archive-keyring.gpg] https://repo.protonvpn.com/debian stable main
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vivaldi.list 
  1: deb [arch=amd64] https://repo.vivaldi.com/stable/deb/ stable main
Info:
  Processes: 268 Uptime: 10m wakeups: 45393 Memory: 31.14 GiB 
  used: 2.41 GiB (7.7%) Init: systemd v: 247 runlevel: 5 Compilers: 
  gcc: 10.2.1 alt: 10 Shell: Bash v: 5.1.4 running in: gnome-terminal 
  inxi: 3.3.01 

[sleeper12]

I'm not very familiar with LMDE, but what does this show:

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iwconfig

[DrPhill]

Sorry - I missed your reply (I was expecting an email notification - doh)

I get:

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lo        no wireless extensions.

enx0023561c4760  no wireless extensions.

wlp0s20f3  IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"vodafoneA58CD0"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:5.52 GHz  Access Point: D6:35:1D:A5:8C:D8   
          Bit Rate=520 Mb/s   Tx-Power=22 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:on
          Link Quality=47/70  Signal level=-63 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:401   Missed beacon:0

But I am currently running on ethernet cable and have connectivity.

[sleeper12]

Turn power management off:

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sudo sed -i 's/3/2/' /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf

Reboot

[DrPhill]

Thanks for the suggestion. I have been suffering some other problems with restore from suspend. Unfortunately I get this:

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drphill@drphill:~$ sudo sed -i 's/3/2/' /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf
[sudo] password for drphill:              
sed: can't read /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf: No such file or directory

There certainly is no

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/etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf

, I can create one with touch, but as it has no contents sed does nothing to it....

I have rm'd the file again for now.

[sleeper12]

So, LMDE must be different then. Someone else should know how to turn it off. A Google search revealed nothing for me.

[DrPhill]

Understood, but thanks for trying.

- Phill

[sleeper12]

Not sure, but maybe this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqIVmKtzITo

[antikythera]

There certainly is no

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/etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/default-wifi-powersave-on.conf

, I can create one with touch, but as it has no contents sed does nothing to it....

I have rm'd the file again for now.

With LMDE you have to create the whole file because as you have found it does not exist. Even so, power management can still be disabled by creating the file, not just sed a value to something that does not exist. Copy and paste the below into the created file, then save:

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[connection]
wifi.powersave = 2

to apply the change after saving the file:
sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager

I have never heard of your Ethernet Adaptor, that's a new device to me. The above should sort the low signal for your Intel wireless though

[DrPhill]

Thanks for that Antikythera,

How does a person learn about what to edit and why? I feel as a software dev of many years I should (be able to) understand this stuff. (Mainly app development on higher level languages like java/kotlin, but I have served some time on assembler and C/C++). Folk on this forum have given me great advice over the years, but I feel I should start to learn to fend for myself.

Unfortunately the problem that prompted thisis intermittent, so I wont know if you have solved it until it does not recur ;-(

[DrPhill]

Was this the change that you were expecting to see:

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iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

wlp0s20f3  IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"vodafoneA58CD0"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:5.3 GHz  Access Point: D6:35:1D:A5:8C:D8   
          Bit Rate=26 Mb/s   Tx-Power=22 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=41/70  Signal level=-69 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:23   Missed beacon:0

enx0023561c4760  no wireless extensions.

[sleeper12]

It would seem so, the power management is now off:

wlp0s20f3 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"vodafoneA58CD0"
Mode:Managed Frequency:5.3 GHz Access Point: D6:35:1D:A5:8C:D8
Bit Rate=26 Mb/s Tx-Power=22 dBm
Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off

Let's hope that solves it.

[DrPhill]

Sure,and thanks sleeper12.
I am not sure what power manager is in these circumstances though - something managing the power delivered to the hardware that does the wifi rx/tx? Will that have implications for battery usage? (I would rather use the battery a bit harder and have internet)

[antikythera]

Thanks for that Antikythera,

How does a person learn about what to edit and why?

Same reason as you, necessity. I had issues with my wireless adapter so looked up what to change on the net. there was this value and another one for my realtek which prevents it searching on startup for networks. If I don't do both it will not connect to my configured wireless network reliably otherwise.

Battery usage will be impacted but not massively, besides you'd waste as much power waiting for content to load anyway otherwise.