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I have a homeserver, with a built-in network card, ASRock E350M1 Motherboard. On the computer there's a Debian Jessie system on an SSD, and 4 HDDs in raid configuration for my data. I usually have access through SSH to that computer. I don't need physical access to it, unless there's a problem.

Recently I started having problems with my network. Sometimes the computer boots, but I can't have SSH access to it. It takes a VERY long time to connect to my network. This doesn't happen always though! Yesterday I spend over 2 hours trying to get it to connect to my network, but it wouldn't work! pinging my router gave network is unreachable. Then suddenly it worked again!

So, I hooked my screen and keyboard there, and started investigating. While the network fails:

  • My network hardware (eth0) uses hotplug and DHCP to find my network. This is default Debian behavior.

  • The command cat /etc/resolv.conf returns the IP of my router (192.168.1.1).

  • The command ifconfig -a, returns only IPv6 IPs. No IPv4!

  • The command route -n, returns a wrong IP address that has nothing to do with my subnet (169.254.0.0)

  • Trying to add my router gateway (sudo route add default gw 192.168.1.1) fails with "SIOCADDRT: Network is unreachable".

  • No firewall is set at all!

  • Network card information; the command lspci | grep -i eth returns: 09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd, RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 06)

  • Non-free firmware is already installed.

This thing is driving me crazy! What would you do? How can I know whether it's a hardware or software issue?

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  • where is your DHCP server? your router/modem? is it configured correctly? on another tack, what kind of network card is in your linux PC? show output of lspci | grep -i eth. Does it require non-free firmware? if so, do you have it installed? (e.g. many Realtek NICs require the firmware-realtek package to be installed)
    – cas
    Oct 25, 2015 at 21:58
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    btw, the 169.254 address is a Link-Local Address. It's not a problem in itself, it just indicates that the interface is not properly configured yet (e.g. hasn't yet received and accepted a DHCP offer). See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-local_address
    – cas
    Oct 25, 2015 at 22:00
  • @cas Thanks for the info. The DHCP server is in my router and it doesn't have a problem as I have 5 other computers and smartphones at home that don't have a problem. The non-free firmware is already installed. I'll print the lspci output in the question now.
    – The Quantum Physicist
    Oct 25, 2015 at 22:20
  • Are the IPv6 addresses you see global unicast, link-local, or something else?
    – kasperd
    Oct 25, 2015 at 22:53
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    Try using the static ip for a while, if you can, and if the random problem does not seem to occur, then I would suggest uninstalling and purging the dchp client software and reconfiguring it from scratch.
    – simpleuser
    Oct 26, 2015 at 16:15

2 Answers 2

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Look at the output of dmesg if there is a hardware/driver/frimware issue you should find some hints (wanings/errors) there.

And you could try booting from a live-CD (or USB) like https://www.debian.org/CD/live/.
If that works fine ist a configuration issue.

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Use mii-tool or ethtool on the interface to see whether Linux can tell that the ethernet card is working, and how that card is connected (speed, full or half-duplex, etc). Also, check the cabling. (re)Seat all plugs. Look at the connection lights on router and the ethernet cards. They the cable on another computer if you can.

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