Arch Linux

zahn01

Member

Registered: 2015-06-07

Posts: 54

[SOLVED] dhcpcd no autostart and nm-applet not functional

Solved! Please see see post 7 below

Good evening everyone,

     I am having networking problems with my Recent installation of Arch Linux ( installed from hybrid iso dated 20150601) :

Problem 1:
     I cannot get dhcpcd to start at boot time although once booted, as 'root,' I can type “dhcpcd netA” to establish an ethernet connection, ping and surfing then work.

Problem2:
Networkmanager and nm-applet have been installed and our useless even though the users are in the network group. They are useless because they are grayed out, can't click on anything. I am guessing a permissions problem and or systemd/systemctl problem. Networkmanager is needed to run ovpn.

The system:
     The system is 64bit with an openbox window manager, and lxpanel all on lvms that reside within a luks partition. No login manager. I have not posted any files or errors because I do not know what is relevant and what is not. I will gladly post the output of any command or log that one might require. Please include the full path to said log or file because, again, systemd/systemctl is alien to me.

Steps taken to enable networking:
     I followed the Arch wiki's install and networking guides, which led to the dhc section which led to the dhcpcd section. The Arch wiki implid that eth0 was not a good name to use do to possible 'race condition' between the kernel and udev. Therefore my ethernet's name was changed to netA from 'enp' something. Next I searched Google to no avail. Didn't search the forums for long as too many hours have gone into simple never before seen problems such as this, Skype and Pulse Audio are also not functional, but I digress...

     A few years ago, I ran Arch for well over three years with the same setup as above (and prior to systemd) with no network problems ever. Most recently I've been running Debian and Freebsd 10 within a geli encrypted partition, so the command line is not daunting to me. I know that the solution is probaby simple. However, I am systemd/systemctl ignorant and therefore Arch ignorant, so again please do not ask to see a log or output without specifying the full path.

Thanks in advance.
Z

Last edited by zahn01 (2015-06-15 04:57:46)

w201

Member

Registered: 2012-10-04

Posts: 289

Re: [SOLVED] dhcpcd no autostart and nm-applet not functional

What do you get if you run

systemctl status NetworkManager.service

?  I always forget to do that on new installs.

zahn01

Member

Registered: 2015-06-07

Posts: 54

Re: [SOLVED] dhcpcd no autostart and nm-applet not functional

What do you get if you run

systemctl status NetworkManager.service

?  I always forget to do that on new installs.

First, thanks for such a swift response. I just returned.  The answer is as follows:

Input 

systemctl status NetworkManager.service

 # systemctl status NetworkManager.service
           NetworkManager.service - Network Manager
            Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
             Active: inactive (dead)

Then I became curious and did a duck search and found: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 3#p1521343 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 7#p1521347

Which led to:

 systemctl NetworkManager-dispatcher.service

and

 systemctl NetworkManager.service

 systemctl status -l NetworkManager.service
● NetworkManager.service - Network Manager
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sun 2015-06-07 22:20:07 CDT; 42s ago
 Main PID: 673 (NetworkManager)
   CGroup: /system.slice/NetworkManager.service
           └─673 /usr/bin/NetworkManager --no-daemon

Jun 07 22:33:55 xaiona02 NetworkManager[673]: <info>  NetworkManager state is now CONNECTED_GLOBAL
Jun 07 22:33:55 xaiona02 NetworkManager[673]: <info>  Policy set 'netA' (netA) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS.
Jun 07 22:33:55 xaiona02 NetworkManager[673]: <info>  (netA): Activation: successful, device activated.
Jun 07 22:33:55 xaiona02 NetworkManager[673]: <info>  wpa_supplicant started
Jun 07 22:33:55 xaiona02 NetworkManager[673]: <info>  (netB) supports 4 scan SSIDs
Jun 07 22:33:55 xaiona02 NetworkManager[673]: <info>  (netB): supplicant interface state: starting -> ready
Jun 07 22:33:55 xaiona02 NetworkManager[673]: <info>  (netB): device state change: unavailable -> disconnected (reason 'supplicant-available') [20 30 42]
Jun 07 22:33:55 xaiona02 NetworkManager[673]: <info>  (netB): supplicant interface state: ready -> disconnected
Jun 07 22:33:55 xaiona02 NetworkManager[673]: <info>  (netB) supports 4 scan SSIDs
Jun 07 17:20:09 xaiona02 NetworkManager[673]: <info>  (netB): supplicant interface state: disconnected -> inactive
Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.

systemctl status -l NetworkManager.service

same output

Now I will reboot and see what happens.

Last edited by zahn01 (2015-06-08 03:56:25)

w201

Member

Registered: 2012-10-04

Posts: 289

Re: [SOLVED] dhcpcd no autostart and nm-applet not functional

Sure no problem, enabling the network manager service with

systemctl enable NetworkManager.service

should make it persistent. If you want to try it out first before making it permanent use

systemctl start NetworkManager.service

Give the network manager and systemd wikis a read they cover just about everything, good stuff in there.

Last edited by w201 (2015-06-08 04:05:49)

zahn01

Member

Registered: 2015-06-07

Posts: 54

Re: [SOLVED] dhcpcd no autostart and nm-applet not functional

Wow! You respond quick! thanks.
Ok, so I need to reboot again to give the enable command a go. On the plus side, I did read how to enable nm-applet at start up.
I Just ran the command:

systemctl enable NetworkManager.service

Did not see any errors.

On a whim, I also just ran systemctl enable ntpd. Seems to have worked a sym links were created. I'm almost starting to think that the systemctl might be important...
rebooting

zahn01

Member

Registered: 2015-06-07

Posts: 54

Re: [SOLVED] dhcpcd no autostart and nm-applet not functional

Sure no problem, enabling the network manager service with

systemctl enable NetworkManager.service

should make it persistent. If you want to try it out first before making it permanent use

systemctl start NetworkManager.service

Give the network manager and systemd wikis a read they cover just about everything, good stuff in there.

     I don't like the current network wikis nor the current beginner's guide as much  as much as I like the wikis with the same title from 2009. The beginner's guide wiki and the networking wikis from 2009 - 2010 were what I would expect if symantec paid individual with degrees in education and technical writing, in a word superlative. Now they are not bad but not great either. I can say that because I've been paid to write in the past.  However, I will read them.

Last edited by zahn01 (2015-06-15 04:41:27)

zahn01

Member

Registered: 2015-06-07

Posts: 54

Re: [SOLVED] dhcpcd no autostart and nm-applet not functional

Thread solved

     nm-applet now starts at boot. I added it to /etc/xdg/openbox/autostart. Wireless does not work yet, but I suspect an error when I typed the mac addy and or systemd and Arch do not like Realtek wifi drivers. I will look into that later

Thanks so much, problem solved!

The steps to enable internet at boot when using systemd on Arch Linux are as follows:
1) find network status with:

 systemctl status NetworkManager.service

for verbose output use:

 systemctl status -l NetworkManager.service

2) start services with:

 systemctl NetworkManager-dispatcher.service

 systemctl NetworkManager.service

systemctl start NetworkManager.service

3) check the new status of the network with:

 systemctl status -l NetworkManager.service

4) If all went well, make NetworkManager persistent with:

 systemctl enable NetworkManager.service 

Reboot and check.

Again, thanks w201 for the rapid, accurate and polite responses.
Advanced Linux and freebsd forums sometimes (but infrequently) have condescending respondents, but you are a credit to the community.

Last edited by zahn01 (2015-06-15 04:50:37)

w201

Member

Registered: 2012-10-04

Posts: 289

Re: [SOLVED] dhcpcd no autostart and nm-applet not functional

Not a problem, I'm glad I could be some help