I’m having trouble getting an IP address via DHCP on my HP ProLiant DL380 Gen9 server running Debian. I’ve tried various troubleshooting steps, but nothing seems to work.

Error messages:

  • “No DHCPOFFERS received”
  • “No working leases in persistent database - sleeping”
  • “Activation of network connection failed” (GNOME)
  • “IP configuration unavailable” (Plasma)

Hardware:

  • HP ProLiant DL380 Gen9 server

Software:

  • Debian operating system
  • GNOME and Plasma desktop environments

Troubleshooting steps:

  • Checked network cable and ensured it’s properly connected
  • Restarted network service
  • Set /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf managed=true

Additional information:

  • Internet worked during the Debian installation process, but not after booting into the installed system.
  • The problem occurs on both GNOME and Plasma desktop environments, but Plasma provides a slightly more helpful error message.

I’d appreciate any help or guidance on resolving this issue. Has anyone else experienced similar problems with DHCP on a HP ProLiant DL380 Gen9 server with Debian?

  •  Eugenia   ( @eugenia@lemmy.ml ) 
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    2 months ago

    I believe the installer version of Debian uses a newer kernel than the one it installs later, that’s why your ethernet worked during installation. Sounds like a borked driver for the specific ethernet adapter and the older kernel. Get a usb-2-ethernet adapter, and retry to update the system, in case you get a newer kernel after updating it.

    • Thanks for the tip! So, just to clarify, you think that if I used an Ethernet female to USB2 male adapter, the drivers might work correctly? Might trying a different distro also work? I already tried Fedora and something else, maybe Manjaro? They didn’t even get to the install screen, but maybe I should try some others that have newer drivers. Any recommendations?

      •  Eugenia   ( @eugenia@lemmy.ml ) 
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        42 months ago

        Instead of re-installing, just use a usb ethernet adapter and see if that works. Linux supports most of them, but do some checking regardless online for the most compatible ones. Then update the system, remove that usb adapter, rebot. Now see if the original ethernet works. If still not, then continue using the usb adapter as your main source for networking.

  • If ip a shows your NIC, I’d recommend checking your networking settings (you can do this via GUI in your DE’s settings) to see if everything is set correctly e.g is automatic DHCP enabled? (It seems so, based on the error messages. That’s just an example.)

    I had a situation the other day where my laptop ethernet port was being assigned to an oddball subnet that had no network connection. As it turned out, I had set the port to share internet in order to set up a Google TV (my dorm network requires a MAC address, but the TV had an old version where you couldn’t get the MAC address until after TV setup, which required a network connect) and had never reversed the setting.

      • Do you know where your DHCP server is? What are you plugging your Debian server’s network cable into? I understand that networking apparently worked while you were installing Debian, and it’s unclear why that would have changed, but if I were in your position the first things I would suspect would be something with the DHCP server itself (like it stopped running or ran out of addresses), or a lack of connectivity between the Debian server and the DHCP server.

        In other words, I’d start troubleshooting with your network, but it’s hard to suggest specifics because we don’t know anything about your network. One simple thing to try might be to restart your router. For most home networks, that’s where the DHCP server will be, and it should start up on boot.

  • You are missing the middle of your troubleshooting process.

    Everything is physically plugged in, your dhcp device is doing its thing and the wire works.

    But does your os see the card? Post the output of ip address show to find out!

    If you wanna jump to the end, and I recommend you do not do that, your os has most likely recognized and automatically selected the fiber interface instead of the cat5 one.

                • It’s not doing what it was before now, now it’s just showing the ‘activation of network connection failed’ error. But before when I ran the up command it had the connected sign, and said it was connected in the GUI, but when I tried accessing any website it wasn’t able to, and I don’t have any firewall installed, so I assumed that the connection wasn’t working.

                  The result for ip address show ens6f1 is now the same as before

                  12: ens6f1: mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP group default qlen 1000
                  link/ether 14:02:ec:7d:52:f1 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
                  altname enp129s0f1
                  inet6 fe80::1602::ecff::fe7d::52f1/64 scope link noprefixroute
                  valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever