No internet, multiple reinstalls

I'm pulling my hair out but I've reinstalled Ubuntu 8.10 about 5 times now and run into the same or similar problem every time. I'm prepared to admit that this is my fault but I'd really like to know what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it. Everytime I install Ubuntu ethernet is working fine, I then go to run updates either from the popup that comes up or by running:

Code:

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude safe-upgrade

After the suggested restart I lose ethernet. I haven't even begun to tackle wifi. I did run the wifi install once described here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne and this worked but again after a restart I lose all internet.

Unfortunately I have reinstalled so many times that I don't have any ifconfig or log files I can post. Everytime this happens I try and run:

Code:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

This does not seem to help any. Are there other tools I should be using?

At the moment i'm mostly concerned with getting ethernet to stay consistent however if anyone has tips to get wifi up and running any help would be appreciated. Am I being too heavy handed with the reinstalls or is there something simple that I am missing. Also, I have seen multiple threads and websites recommending changing the ext3 filesystem to ext2 but no one is explaining why. Do I need to make the change from ext3 to ext2 and if so why? If it helps I'm attempting to run this on the Acer Aspire One AOA150 with the 160gb HDD.

 

Nny,
i've never used Ububtu, but i'd suggest what's happening is that during the install the system is loading the module needed for your ethernet, but upon rebooting it doesn't load it again.
should be fairly easy to fix, i think all you would need to do for ubuntu is to add the module name to /etc/modules. if you open it as root (eg sudo nano /etc/modules) and add the names of all the modules your machine needs it will load them at boot. The ethernet module for the AAO is r8169 (or maybe r8101 if that doesn't work) i think, so if you add that to that file with one module per line then hopefully the module should load at boot. (same goes for wireless but with ath_pci or some such)
The other thing to look into is running `lsmod` before the reboot and comparing it to `lsmod` after the reboot. lsmod lists the modules that are loaded by the kernel at the moment, then, generally speaking, you can can/should add all the modules that were loaded before reboot to /etc/modules, you can also load them on the fly with "sudo modprobe (module_name)"
if this has no impact on the system check whether the output of "ifconfig -a" contains a reference to eth0 after reboot maybe?

if your problem keeps occuring then could you just not run the update? it isn't always necessary to have the latest versions of software...

hope this helps somewhat, otherwise some more details would be great

ps ext2 vs ext3 shouldn't have the slightest impact on this problem...

 

Two or three weeks ago, I had the same problem.
I found that the problem came from the kernel 2.6.27.11
I got around this by installing sickboy's kernal from a USB and everything went fine.

You can type:
uname -a
to see the version of your linux kernal.

ext 2 is necessary for the SSD version, because repeated I/O reduces the life of the SSD.

 

Bruce, thank you very much for the help. While the information wasn't what I used to solve my problem it did help and I will benefit from that information in the future. I did end up installing sickboy's kernel. It has helped my boot and shutdown times as well as giving me consistent wifi and ethernet.

Katbert, do you know if I will run into further issues if I update Ubuntu in the future, like if I ever decide to go up to Ubuntu 9 when it is released? Also, do you, or anyone else know how I can change my screen brightness? I'm not too concerned about using the Function keys to change it but if I go into System>Preferences>Power Management I can change the display brightness slider but it has no effect on the display.