I lose internet every night

User Support
1

I have this weird issue where my net VM (right now I have a debian-11 based one named deb-net) borks every night and when I come back to my computer in the morning I have to restart the VM (and every VM that relies on it, basically everything except vault) before I can do any internet things.
Ping fails in deb-net and clicking the icon shows this stupid message:

network problems
network problems1600×900 48.6 KB

You can see from my earlier command in that shell that Networking is NOT disabled, and yet the wired ethernet plug in the back of the machine is still not detected.

Something similar has been happening with Fedora-based templates so don’t be too quick to blame Debian 11.

Do I need to set up a while sleep 90000; do ping -c2 8.8.8.8; done or something to catch what exactly time this happens, or what is the next troubleshooting step?

2

OK, I caught it, happening at a time I was definitely not using the computer (I probably stopped using it significantly before 11pm):
I ran command:
while (qvm-run update "ping -c2 google.com"); do sleep 90; done; date; qvm-run -p deb-net "ping -c2 google.com"
which resulted in:

Running ‘ping -c2 google.com’ on update
Running ‘ping -c2 google.com’ on update
…(for hours)
Running ‘ping -c2 google.com’ on update
Running ‘ping -c2 google.com’ on update
Running ‘ping -c2 google.com’ on update
update: command failed with code: 2
Fri Oct 15 01:26:29 MDT 2021
ping: google.com: Temporary failure in name resolution

Now, here’s the really big deal: if there is a little blip in the internet, I don’t think Qubes should quit trying to connect. Or worse yet! If someone sends a malicious packet, should that really be able to disable my network (manager) ??!?!

My workaround is like this:

#!/bin/bash

qvm-start dummyNet

qvm-prefs fed netvm dummyNet
qvm-prefs work netvm dummyNet
qvm-prefs Personal netvm dummyNet
qvm-prefs zt netvm dummyNet;
sleep 6;
qvm-shutdown deb-net && qvm-start deb-net
sleep 6;
qvm-prefs fed netvm deb-net
qvm-prefs work netvm deb-net
qvm-prefs Personal netvm deb-net
qvm-prefs zt netvm deb-net

But I would really like to get to the bottom of why this is happening.

3

@Narvey observed:

Now, here’s the really big deal: if there is a little blip in the internet, I don’t think Qubes should quit trying to connect.

All this tells us is that your internet connection goes down for a (so far) unknown reason. You haven’t really provided any data yet at all that would be helpful. Let’s start with these questions:

  1. What story do the log files in your sys-net tell?
  2. Do you have any other devices on that network? Do they have similar issues?
  3. Have you looked into your network settings (at the router)? DHCP timeout? Key rotation?
  4. When this happens, does ping from inside sys-net still work? … how about sys-firewall?
  5. What are your memory settings for the sys-net qube? … are you using debian-minimal?

You should not infer anything about Qubes OS behavior without more information.

Or worse yet! If someone sends a malicious packet, should that really be able to disable my network (manager) ??!?!

When I see things like this I have to ask outright: what is your objective? Do you want to investigate an issue you are having or spread FUD for the lulz. Your motivation matters and informs the communities reaction substantially.

4

What if you try debian-10? I had funny stuff happen with debian-11 that got me paranoid. Switched back to 10 in some instances and things seem fine.

5

so the ping utility say it a dns problem ?

6

which log file(s) are most relevant to this problem? I don’t know where to look.

I don’t have any other devices that run Qubes. Does wireless count as on the same network as my wired connection?

note it didn’t happen last night. I wonder if it was fixed by Can't install in templates - #6 by Narvey

I’ll reply with further information (and logs, if you tell me where to look) iff the problem occurs again. Else, thanks and everyone have a good day!

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