Live xfce usb isn't connecting to the internet

Live xfce usb isn’t connecting to the internet. I’m not finding instructions anywhere on how to fix this, and I’m trying Manjaro for the first time. To complicate things, my computer just stopped booting from the hard drive in the distro I was using (Solus), so I can’t just make a new live USB to try.

Here’s what happened with the problem booting from the hard drive, in case it has some bearing on the internet problem. I booted once from the Manjaro live USB, then quickly decided to reboot from the hard drive, to do some things in Solus before checking out Manjaro. Things were buggy:

  1. Thunderbird was running from when the machine had been hibernated. (Yes, a complete shutdown would have been nicer, so I’m wondering if the hibernation is the culprit.) But online/offline toggle was buggy, the mouse pointer had a spinning circle, and it was hard to switch mail folders.

  2. Firefox wouldn’t start. I was told that it was already running, but the task manager showed no processes for it.

  3. Transmission was open, from downloading the Manjaro torrent last night. I don’t normally use Transmission, so I don’t know how Solus reacts to waking up from hibernation when it is open.

I shut down the computer from the screen, but then wasn’t able to complete a reboot.
For the purpose of this post, I’ve just tried another reboot from the hard drive. Here’s what I see on the screen:

Generating “/run/initramfs/rdsosreport.txt”

Entering emergency mode. Exit the shell to continue.
Type “journalctl” to view system logs.
You might want to save “run/initramfs/rdsosreport.txt” to a USB stick or /boot after mounting them and attach it to a bug report.

:/# [blinking cursor]


What set me off on this adventure was trying to get a webcam working in Linux. I’ve been thinking of switching from Solus anyway, so before giving up on the webcam, which wasn’t working in Solus, I decided to try it with distros that are known to have great hardware support. Manjaro was my first choice for such a distro. If the webcam works with Manjaro, I’ll install Manjaro and give it a try for a while.

Wait.
How did you boot the USB if the system wasnt shutdown?

Then the rest of your post…

Booting a manjaro USB wont touch your other installation or files.
Not unless you forcibly did something, used a program like gparted, or attempted an install.
Otherwise … simply booting from a Manjaro USB (which still I dont understand how you did without shutting down) will not in any way affect your solus. Any problems you have with solus are just that - a solus problem.

I think there is more missing from this story.

Anyways … so … the thread title is about network connection.
I dont really see any information in your post about that.
Is that still what you want help with?

I suggest you take a look at this:

1 Like

Thanks for the reply. To answer your question about the shutdown, I had left the Manjaro USB connected to the computer when I hibernated it last night. In case the terms for the different ways of powering down are different in Solus than they are here, I mean the option where the computer saves the state of the machine, then completely powers off. I had intended to go back into Solus when I first turned on the computer today, but it booted from the USB stick instead. After that, each switch between Manjaro and the sad state of my Solus installation has involved completely shutting down the computer. I do realize that booting from a USB doesn’t affect what’s on the hard drive unless the user goes out of their way to write something to it, which I haven’t done. Still, I thought that too much information was better than too little, and I didn’t want to just say that I tried Manjaro and I couldn’t go online, when other things had happened that might have had a bearing on the situation.

So yes, I’m looking for help in establishing an internet connection. I was assuming that the Manjaro USB would connect to the internet automatically. If I’m mistaken about that, how am I supposed to connect? If I’m not mistaken, then how do I troubleshoot the issue? My computer is a Dell Optiplex 380. The network card is a Broadcom Netlink BCM57780 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe. The network interface is loopback.

By the nature of the problem, I can’t easily provide the screenfuls of system info that the guidelines ask for; I’m using my phone in this forum.

I was able to get online in Linux Mint, so nothing seems to have gone wrong with the hardware. The problems in Solus seem to be a coincidence. For now, I’ll be moving on to try other distros, but it would be great to be able to get Manjaro working, too.

Someone on Reddit showed me how to solve this problem when I tried Arch. Basically, Arch has a problem with my networking card, and Manjaro inherits that problem.

When I booted from the Manjaro live USB tonight, I saw that I once again had no network connection. Therefore, I started the Arch solution by disconnecting my ethernet cable, opening a terminal, and entering the following commands:

sudo modprobe --remove tg3
sudo modprobe broadcom
sudo modprobe tg3

I then reconnected the cable and assessed the situation:

dmesg | grep tg3
ping google dot com [replace " dot " with ‘.’]

Now that I had an internet connection, I was able to install Manjaro, and unlike with Arch, no further work was needed to make the connection happen automatically each time I start my computer.

This Broadcom device has been a known problem for some time

Yes, which makes it even more desirable that the Manjaro installation be able to handle it. When I got the problem when I first tried Manjaro in October, no one had a solution for me in this thread. In fact, I was told to look at instructions on how to post to the forum. I’m mentioning this to be helpful, not to put people on the defensive; the Manjaro team seems to want people to use Manjaro, and I appreciate their efforts enough that I came back to try it again. But when I was evaluating it as an easy-to-use distro, it didn’t meet my needs, since I wasn’t even able to connect to the internet with it. Now that I’m evaluating it as a last-ditch effort to get Linux working on my computer, and now that I’ve messed around a bit with Arch, I’m willing to do more to make Manjaro work for me. And indeed, I see that the Manjaro team admits that things might go wrong from time to time. But I’m not seeing why the installation doesn’t check for this problem if it’s known and it’s such a deal breaker. Of course, the installation program isn’t going to be able to fix the problem entirely by itself, since the user has to disconnect and reconnect the ethernet cable. However, I would have been perfectly happy the first time if a diagnostic message had appeared, along with instructions on how to fix the problem.

Are you still doing that every time you boot?
If yes:
this (post #2) should contain the permanent solution. (link goes to Arch forum)
create the file
/etc/modprobe.d/tg3_broadcom.conf
(the name is your choice, just keep the .conf ending)

put this in it:
softdep tg3 pre: broadcom

This does load the the needed modules in the correct order.
… I just found it - cannot test but it looks like the correct solution

1 Like

I could not find information on Archwiki before - search for BCM57780 redirects to
an incorrect page

Archwiki has the information OP found via reddit;
and a possible solution to order the modules in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf ;
and the modprobe option you found in Arch forum
Network configuration/Ethernet - Broadcom BCM57780 - ArchWiki

The modprobe option is simple with one command

echo 'softdep tg3 pre: broadcom' | sudo tee --append /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom.conf
1 Like

… even better :wink:
and the command you kindly provided also makes it much easier to implement!

I got stuck searching the Arch wiki due to that incorrect link.
So I looked further and found the forum post.

You found the place in the wiki that I, too, was looking for but didn’t find …
since it’s there, it should indeed work.

… even two options now:
via mkinitcpio.conf in the initrd
and
via the normal modprobe way
:+1:

… how could the people who develop the installer
who do not possess that specific hardware - and thus could never have tested for this issue -
how could they have included THIS in the installer?
(this last paragraph is just a rather rhetorical question re the OP)

If it indeed works - now they perhaps can. :wink:

No, I don’t need to do this every time I boot. The installation program set things up so that my computer connects to the internet each time it boots.

As I now realize, the problem actually occurs when running the live USB, rather than the installer. The installer handles the situation fine, that is, if it doesn’t need an internet connection to run or if the user has managed to establish the internet connection on their own.

As for how this problem could have been anticipated, nikgnomic notes in an earlier comment that it has been known about for some time. Therefore, it’s a reasonable thing for the team working on the live USB to know about, or for someone to tell them about, so that the live USB can somehow help the user deal with it. Or maybe put a warning on the website.

the problem actually occurs when running the live USB, rather than the installer. The installer handles the situation fine

If the installer can fix this for installed OS then it is not as significant a problem as I first suspected

This NIC device was a known problem, but was only mentioned 2 or 3 times on the old Manjaro forum. I found one discussion marked with a solution. Other users have confirmed the solution worked for them, but not much hard data for developers to consider a fix
(not easy to search for these posts about ethernet devices as there are many false positives about problems with Broadcom wifi devices)

I would have been perfectly happy the first time if a diagnostic message had appeared, along with instructions on how to fix the problem

A Linux diagnostic might include a comment about how to fix an error, but it is not likely to just appear unsolicited
The linked discussion ‘How to provide good information’ shows how to use dmesg and journalctl commands to check system messages
A developer would need that information, and information to identify the hardware device, to consider any bug report or proposed fix