[SOLVED] Connected iOS 11.2 devices seen as eth0, can break networking

nilesOien · 2017-12-07 20:05:42

I've investigated a bit more.

It seems like connecting an iPhone via USB will always cause a directory to appear in /sys/class/net/ that is appropriate for a network driver. This happens even if the iPhone has "hot spot" turned off. It does not seem to depend on a particularly recent version of iOS. It also seems to not depend on if I elect to "trust computer" on the iPhone when connecting.

Usually the driver directory will be something appropriate for the usb port, like /sys/class/net/enp0s26f7u4c4i2/ but if I plug the iPhone into the USB port on my monitor (as I usually did, instead of plugging it directly into the PC) then the driver directory for the iPhone is called /sys/class/net/eth0/

As far as I can tell, even that isn't really a problem unless you reboot while the system is in that state (which I did when updating Arch). Speculatively, it seems like something happened at boot time with /sys/class/net/eth0/ getting written to somehow. In my case, that seems like it messed up the OS install on the iPhone and also messed up the settings I had in NetworkManager so that the network was unreachable.

I'm not sure of the details, and I'm not able/willing to test the reboot in that state, because it required an OS re-install on my iPhone. But speculatively, I'm guessing that a reboot while the iPhone appears as network interface /sys/class/net/eth0 is what caused this issue.

I've "solved" this by buying a charger for the iPhone and using that at work rather than using a USB port. I'm still not sure of the details of what went on, because it seems so risky to test.

Arch Linux

#26 2017-12-07 20:05:42

Re: [SOLVED] Connected iOS 11.2 devices seen as eth0, can break networking

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