I look after a relative's 14.04 xubuntu system. They live some way away so it wasn't possible for me to help them directly. They lost all internet connections, so a) couldn't look for solutions, and b) couldn't do any upgrades. They are capable of following detailed instructions, but don't really understand what they are doing. So when I spell out 'sudo' and they still type 'pseudo' I don't know why it hasn't worked. I'm no expert either, but I can usually sort things out after a time.
Suffice to say this was really hard to resolve. Once I found the askubuntu thread I realised that was probably the cause of their problem, and found this report, but that was only after many other checks and tests. I should stress that they don't have 'proposed' updates enabled (nor even LTS updates), so their system was indeed crippled by an official release, and in a way that made determining a cause and fixing it rather hard. Not great. I got them to try the solution manually enabling eth0, but this didn't seem to work. Eventually I managed to rather painfully describe the method of downgrading the 3 library files (which were very fortunately still in the archives) and that worked. Getting new .debs to them would have been fraught with difficulty. They have since done a full update and all is now well. I've gone to a little length to explain this here because I think the ubuntu family of systems is great, and I encourage non-technical people to use it. Bad updates to network software are, however, very serious indeed, since the means of diagnosing and resolving such issues are inherently unavailable. This doesn't do much for ubuntu's reputation, or its wider use amongst less technical people. Can I hope that 'lessons have been learned'? -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to network-manager in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1539634 Title: network-manager crashes when using libnl-3-200 3.2.21-1ubuntu1 Status in network-manager package in Ubuntu: Fix Released Status in network-manager source package in Trusty: Fix Released Bug description: [Triage Notes] This regression is caused by a libnl proposed update tracked in bug 1511735. It has not been released as an update, only proposed as an update for early testing. If you volunteered to test proposed updates, then thank you. Your care and attention will stop this regression from hitting ordinary users, and we appreciate your contribution to Ubuntu. If you are not aware that you volunteered to test proposed updates, then please be aware that your system is configured to do so. In this case, you probably should turn this off. I'd appreciate if someone could explain how to do this in the comments. [Impact] * NetworkManager depends on libnl (libnl-3-200 libnl-genl-3-200 libnl-route-3-200) and when libnl is updated to proposed 3.2.21-1ubuntu1 NM segfaults due to libnl exposing a bug in NM validation packets. This affects the 0.98 release of NetworkManager and has already been fixed in newer releases. * Backporting fixes from upstream release is required to prevent NetworkManager from faulting which breaks networking on most Desktop releases. * All patches applied are already accepted upstream and newer Ubuntu releases are not affected. * Upgrading NetworkManager to 0.9.8.8-0ubuntu7.3 prior to updating libnl-3.2.21-1ubuntu1 is required to prevent NetworkManager crashing. [Test Case] * Reproduce crash test: 1. Download 14.04.03 Desktop iso, amd64 2. Launched in a VM, run from iso 3. In terminal, enable proposed 4. sudo apt-get install libnl-3-200 libnl-genl-3-200 libnl-route-3-200 5. sudo restart network-manager # note the nm-applet disappears as NM has now crashed, no network conn. 6. dmesg to confirm network-manager crash 7. sudo dpkg --install gir1.2-networkmanager-1.0_0.9.8.8-0ubuntu7.3_amd64.deb libnm-glib4_0.9.8.8-0ubuntu7.3_amd64.deb libnm-glib-vpn1_0.9.8.8-0ubuntu7.3_amd64.deb libnm-util2_0.9.8.8-0ubuntu7.3_amd64.deb network-manager_0.9.8.8-0ubuntu7.3_amd64.deb 8. sudo start network-manager # nm-applet reappears, network connectivity restored * Successful upgrade test: 1. Download 14.04.03 Desktop iso, amd64 2. Launched in a VM, run from iso 3. In a terminal, sudo dpkg --install gir1.2-networkmanager-1.0_0.9.8.8-0ubuntu7.3_amd64.deb libnm-glib4_0.9.8.8-0ubuntu7.3_amd64.deb libnm-glib-vpn1_0.9.8.8-0ubuntu7.3_amd64.deb libnm-util2_0.9.8.8-0ubuntu7.3_amd64.deb network-manager_0.9.8.8-0ubuntu7.3_amd64.deb 4. sudo restart network-manager # NM still runs, no crash, net up 5. enable trusty-proposed in /etc/apt/sources.list 6. sudo apt-get update 7. sudo apt-get install libnl-3-200 libnl-genl-3-200 libnl-route-3-200 8. sudo restart network-manager # NM still runs, no crash, net up. [Regression Potential] * NetworkManager is a highly visible package, so testing NetworkManager functionality is critical. The patch does address the crash specificly introduced by the updated libnl SRU. * We need to ensure that users have installed this NetworkManager update before installing libnl3 update (special phasing needed). [Original Description] Testing out proposed libnl-3 package[1] exposed a bug in NM 0.98. After installing updated libnl3 and restarting networkmanager, NM crashes with: /var/log/syslog shows: init: network-manager main process (1057) killed by SEGV signal init: network-manager main process ended, respawning init: network-manager main process (1065) killed by SEGV signal init: network-manager respawning too fast, stopped The bug has been fixed in upstream 0.98 with these patches: http://cgit.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/commit/?id=8e4576b9fdb5c888d20a13aa2cc198df790dba54 http://cgit.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/commit/?id=65981edb9f562c07e78815c98093da67c50bfdcf To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/1539634/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
