[SOLVED] Realtek Ethernet adapter being finicky

miceol · 2021-05-04 05:09:53

I'm brand new to Arch Linux, just installed it today. I'm having the weirdest problems though, I use Discord for communicating with friends but I'm completely unable to sign in or download the Discord tar.gz package. It seems like it's unable to resolve the host name. Most other websites that aren't related to downloading software are fine, and work flawlessly.

Tested websites that are non-functional:
- Many GitHub download pages.
- Discord download page*
- Minecraft.net (won't even let me sign in)
- Zoom from AUR, Could not resolve host: zoom.us

Some git repositories don't work (ex: the AUR yay repository is inaccessible) and all it gives me is that it's unable to access the website. I have checked the Network configuration/Ethernet wiki page and followed the steps in the troubleshooting section, but so far nothing has worked. I'm using Firefox, but it doesn't work in the terminal either so I assume that's not the problem here. Everything works great on Windows, so the controller isn't defective.

PC specs:
Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 06)
IOMMU Disabled (I read somewhere in the wiki that if it were enabled it would break things so it's off)
AMD FX-8120 8 Core Processor
24 GB of RAM
1TB Hard Drive
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Super graphics

More information that termite spits out at me about my Ethernet controller:
Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 06)
Subsystem: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd Onboard Ethernet
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17, NUMA node 0
I/O ports at ae00 [size=256]
Memory at fd9ff000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K]
Memory at fd9f8000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: r8169
Kernel modules: r8169

*Here's exactly what I get when I try to access the Discord download link:

We can’t connect to the server at dl.discordapp.net.

If that address is correct, here are three other things you can try:

Try again later.
Check your network connection.
If you are connected but behind a firewall, check that Firefox has permission to access the Web.

If anyone knows how to help, please reply. I've been wanting to switch to Linux but my older hardware is holding me back (and my lack of knowledge about Unix systems )
Thanks!

Last edited by miceol (2021-05-04 22:51:33)

linerman · 2021-05-04 06:32:02

I do not know if it is related to our Ethernet cards - I have got exactly the same, but I had the same issues as you.
Github downloads and sometimes AUR were unreachable.
In my case, enabling NetworkManager helped.

sudo systemctl enable NetworkManager.service

P.S. I have also done installation like written here https://archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/r8168/ , and blacklist r8169 driver.

Last edited by linerman (2021-05-04 06:34:46)

ewaller · 2021-05-04 14:55:06

What tool are you using to control your network connection?

I have a hunch. Any chance you are not getting an IPv4 address? What is the output of ip addr ?

miceol · 2021-05-04 17:34:23

I'm using NetworkManager. I know for sure that it's unable to resolve the hostname of the websites I tried to visit. I was thinking it's a DNS problem because my dad has a Raspberry Pi that acts as an ad blocker in the basement with all of our network equipment and I think that it messes with some DNS settings. I get this when I type ip addr into the terminal:

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: enp5s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 90:2b:34:a3:4a:09 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.2.234/24 brd 192.168.2.255 scope global dynamic noprefixroute enp5s0
valid_lft 86138sec preferred_lft 86138sec
inet6 fe80::52d7:7e61:4259:e17d/64 scope link noprefixroute
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

I already had NetworkManager enabled since I did that in the installation process, and I did try to blacklist the r8169 driver but it ended up bricking Arch. I probably just did it wrong, it said that fsck was unable to run and I ran it manually, but it ended up going for a while then a bunch of numbers started scrolling on the screen with no hard drive activity so I just reinstalled Arch.

Edit: I checked the Network Tools application on GNOME, and my interface is not being recognized. Driver problems maybe?

Last edited by miceol (2021-05-04 17:58:06)

ewaller · 2021-05-04 22:24:07

You could be right about the Rasp Pi. You do have an IPv4 address. What I had been thinking was that you were resolving IPv6 sites, but dropping IPv4. Not the case.

Try a traceroute to one of the sites to which you cannot connect and see where it dies.

Edit: Example:

ewaller@odin/home/ewaller % traceroute minecraft.net
traceroute to minecraft.net (99.84.227.53), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
 1  _gateway (192.168.1.1)  1.325 ms  1.360 ms  1.420 ms
 2  * * *
 3  dtr02psdnca-tge-0-3-1-3.psdn.ca.charter.com (96.34.102.45)  16.958 ms  16.903 ms  16.932 ms
 4  cts02whtrca-gbe-17-0.whtr.ca.charter.com (96.34.97.154)  19.939 ms  19.997 ms  20.066 ms
 5  bbr02atlnga-bue-1.atln.ga.charter.com (96.34.3.18)  20.179 ms  21.747 ms  21.770 ms
 6  bbr02snjsca-bue-8.snjs.ca.charter.com (96.34.0.176)  32.071 ms  30.850 ms  33.924 ms
 7  prr01snjsca-bue-6.snjs.ca.charter.com (96.34.3.3)  32.658 ms  29.825 ms  29.203 ms
 8  99.82.176.224 (99.82.176.224)  28.940 ms  23.814 ms 99.83.70.128 (99.83.70.128)  39.789 ms
 9  52.93.47.137 (52.93.47.137)  35.221 ms * 52.93.47.133 (52.93.47.133)  32.713 ms
10  52.93.237.13 (52.93.237.13)  29.154 ms 52.93.237.3 (52.93.237.3)  24.146 ms 52.93.237.1 (52.93.237.1)  34.122 ms
11  * * *
12  * * *
13  * * *
14  * * *
15  * * *
16  server-99-84-227-53.sfo5.r.cloudfront.net (99.84.227.53)  32.580 ms  27.874 ms  32.393 ms
ewaller@odin/home/ewaller %

Last edited by ewaller (2021-05-04 22:25:39)

miceol · 2021-05-04 22:50:42

Okay, it was a DNS problem! These websites were blacklisted by the Rasp Pi and it couldn't resolve the hostname. I switched DNS servers to 8.8.8.8 (Google's DNS server) and my problems were fixed.

Here's what traceroute gave me before swapping:
$ sudo traceroute dl.discordapp.net
dl.discordapp.net: No address associated with hostname
Cannot handle "host" cmdline arg `dl.discordapp.net' on position 1 (argc 1)

After DNS swap:
$ sudo traceroute dl.discordapp.net
traceroute to dl.discordapp.net (162.159.130.232), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 _gateway (192.168.2.1) 1.375 ms 1.317 ms 1.269 ms
2 192.168.1.254 (192.168.1.254) 3.315 ms 3.273 ms 3.235 ms
3 10.139.20.1 (10.139.20.1) 4.789 ms 4.755 ms 4.718 ms
4 154.11.10.152 (154.11.10.152) 7.166 ms 7.053 ms 7.015 ms
5 172.69.156.2 (172.69.156.2) 7.218 ms 7.181 ms 7.562 ms
6 162.159.130.232 (162.159.130.232) 7.110 ms 5.816 ms 5.929 ms

Thank you guys so much for the help now I can get all the programs that I need!

Arch Linux

#1 2021-05-04 05:09:53

[SOLVED] Realtek Ethernet adapter being finicky

#2 2021-05-04 06:32:02

Re: [SOLVED] Realtek Ethernet adapter being finicky

#3 2021-05-04 14:55:06

Re: [SOLVED] Realtek Ethernet adapter being finicky

#4 2021-05-04 17:34:23

Re: [SOLVED] Realtek Ethernet adapter being finicky

#5 2021-05-04 22:24:07

Re: [SOLVED] Realtek Ethernet adapter being finicky

#6 2021-05-04 22:50:42

Re: [SOLVED] Realtek Ethernet adapter being finicky

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