Greetings all,

 

See my last post in thread for method I found to get around issues.

 

EDIT: This may be limited to   is an apt issue DNS seems ok after all.  Use nmtui to edit network config not armbian-config 

None of what follows should be taken as complaining. I am only trying to get some help, give some observations from a non-expert viewpoint and possibly help ID a bug. Not being an expert, I am looking for confirmation.

 

I am trying to get the NanoPi NEO core-2 LTS set up and am having some issues with apt. I haven't gone past that because the first thing after getting properly booting install (for me anyway) is to install webmin. This makes it relatively easier for me to have visibility into the system, edit config files etc. etc. 

 

My /etc/apt/sources.list seems to be correct but when I do apt install webmin I get "no candidate". on another system running Linux 4.14.0 on aarch64 (also a FA NanoPi NEO2 (+) variant, the webmin package is there. apt clean, apt update, apt --fix-broken install have all been done. I changed to GB sources in armbian config utility but that domain wasn't responding. The other system is using dietpi, is on the same network, uses an identical sources.list (for all intents) and works fine.  This is what lead me eventually to look at DNS and network as possible causes.

 

Using armbian-config, I set my system up with static IP and if I found a place to enter dns I use 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 (I don't use domain names inside my network) . I couldn't find a place to do that. If I ping google.com from command line on NEO, it works. If I ping google.com I get a response. if I ping nasa.gov I don't (more later).EDIT: This was a bad ping target. I wasn't watching closely enough to see that dns resolved the IP and that the IP is what gets pinged directly. I learned something today! I tried editing nano /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf and replacing dns=default  with dns=none and then putting entry for 1.1.1.1  in my resolve.conf.  to no avail. domain names are working for the rest of my network so I am inclined to think something is wrong with this particular system.

 

I do not use IPv6 so I opted to turn that off in armbian-config (I don't understand why apt and IPv6 are associated). Again, IPv4 static IP, correct gateway IP, correct mask, and I could find no option to enter DNS servers. Wifi is not in use Wired does work at least a little (I can ping google).  But beyond that I am not confident in the state of the network configuration. When selecting clear network interfaces I did see DNS masquerading option not loaded error.  It is not clear to me if that is important. I also went to "advanced|edit /etc/network/interfaces and the file shown has no entry for eth0 but does have an comment "#Network is managed by Network manager" along with the local loopback entries.  

 

There seems to be an issue with the armbian-config menu system (at least in my mind) in that when selecting an action, the only route back from any action is to cancel.  This is not optimal - or I am missing something here? For some menu items the current status of the item is displayed as part of the menu (enabled vs disabled) for others, it is not and when you select the menu item (select static vs dynamic) the screen refreshes to show enable and disable options but does not indicate the current state. Cancel does what in that case? Also,  I tried reverting to dhcp and leaving IPv6  disabled as indicated in config menu. After reboot IPv6 address is present in Ifconfig (below)! Still disabled in Armbian-config. Toggling IPv6 does remove IPv6 address from ifconfig but only 'till reboot. Disable does not survive reboot.  Regardless of presence of IPv6 address, I am unable to ping nasa.gov but can ping google.com. Again, both visible from other devices on my network.

 

not working

eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.1.114  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.1.255
        inet6 fe80::XXXX:YYYY:1cc:1220  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link> # I mangled address
        ether MAC REMOVED  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 1729  bytes 185731 (181.3 KiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 169  bytes 14605 (14.2 KiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0
        device interrupt 24

        
Working Nano

eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.1.149  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.1.255
        ether MAC REMOVED  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 4295815  bytes 468858671 (447.1 MiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 2467577  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 38465  bytes 22491765 (21.4 MiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0
        device interrupt 28

 

 

 

Seems like there are two separate but closely related issues here.  Control over IPv6 and DNS. With a third less critical being ambiguous configuration menu functions and display.

 

Thanks for taking the time to read this far. Hope you can help.

 

Q

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Quanta said:

Using armbian-config, I set my system up with static IP and if I found a place to enter dns I use 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 (I don't use domain names inside my network) . I couldn't find a place to do that. If I ping google.com from command line on NEO, it works. If I ping google.com I get a response. if I ping nasa.gov I don't (more later). I tried editing nano /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf and replacing dns=default  with dns=none and then putting entry for 1.1.1.1  in my resolve.conf.  to no avail. domain names are working for the rest of my network so I am inclined to think something is wrong with this particular system.

 

You're doing it wrong...

 

if you're headless - nmtui is how to manage interfaces... you can set DNS there...

 

 

Don't edit the conf files directly - as you noted, it can cause problems...

SFX2k

 

Wrong as it may be I followed the documentation here getting started which under

I attempted to use the options offered there. I came back to the forum just now after I noted that there is another DIFFERENT way shown to update farther down the page to update. 

 

I understand that documentation is a challenge to keep up to date and perfectly correct but it is also unhelpful and impolite to point out someone's error when it was a result of faulty directions they relied upon  without also acknowledging the bad directions. Further, it is less helpful to others tripped up for the same reason that are searching for help.  Far better to simply point out that the menus for network configuration in armbian-config don't work (at the moment) and that farther down the page there are different directions that should work(they also don't appear to fully solve my problem by the way) .

Now for the update: I restarted board after using nmtui exiting, re-entering and seeing changes I made stuck, rebooting and once again re-entering nmtui to verify. I do see an IP address (I don't recall seeing that before - will check) so that suggests that DNS is now accessible but APT still messed up. UPDATE. I was using a bad ping target. PINGING domain names does work - for sure after using nmti to configure network. 

I don't do this every day but I think I have used nasa.gov in the past for a ping test. It has been a while since I have had to solve this kind of problem though. 

root@HAL_Mk1:~# ping nasa.gov
PING nasa.gov (52.0.14.116) 56(84) bytes of data.
^C
--- nasa.gov ping statistics ---
12 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 11267ms

Q

 

On 1/6/2019 at 1:25 PM, Quanta said:

I tried editing nano /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf and replacing dns=default  with dns=none and then putting entry for 1.1.1.1  in my resolve.conf.  to no avail. domain names are working for the rest of my network so I am inclined to think something is wrong with this particular system.

 

Again - try not to edit NetworkManager.conf or /etc/resolv.conf directly - there are interactions between systemd and network manager....

 

To view your current dnsresolvers in use - systemd-resolve --status

 

For NM - TUI is nice, but one can also use nmcli (which is what the armbian-config util uses) and get a lot of info there...

 

Rather than regurgitate - better to have a good source that you can refer to...

 

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Networking/CLI

 

Quote

I understand that documentation is a challenge to keep up to date and perfectly correct but it is also unhelpful and impolite to point out someone's error when it was a result of faulty directions they relied upon  without also acknowledging the bad directions. Further, it is less helpful to others tripped up for the same reason that are searching for help.  Far better to simply point out that the menus for network configuration in armbian-config don't work (at the moment) and that farther down the page there are different directions that should work(they also don't appear to fully solve my problem by the way)

 

Sometimes humor comes across incorrectly - sorry if you feel hurt by that.

 

BTW - armbian-config is not [edit] broken for this use case, as it does do the nmcli correctly... you can see what it does here...

 

https://github.com/armbian/config/blob/master/debian-config-functions-network

 

And keep in mind that many large hosts are behind load-balancers and the like, so always best to ping an FQDN vs. an IP addr, unless one knows that the IP addr does in fact resolve correctly, esp these days with distributed content delivery networks like Cloudflare and others..

 

 

42 minutes ago, sfx2000 said:

Sometimes humor comes across incorrectly - sorry if you feel hurt by that.

1) Agreed. 2)Not hurt. As indicated, following up with a serious and respectful response makes it a little clearer as to the intent - but only a little. 

Making a generalization here so --CAUTION-- Prickly responses to help requests count heavily against the platform (in this case Armbian) in the mind of new prospects considering investing their resources in the endeavor. That really does "hurt" everyone! Moving on.

 

Thanks for the link and comments networking and DNS resolution. I will review. As I was thinking about how ping works after the fact, it made sense to me that when ping gets a DN it would first pass it off for DN resolution and then ping the resolved IP addr. that was returned. It may not be that simple or even correct, but It is a reminder to me to not focus too intently on one thing. The bigger picture is still important to keep in mind.

 

Quote

 ...one can also use nmcli (which is what the armbian-config util uses)

...

BTW - armbian-config is broken for this use case, as it does do the nmcli correctly... you can see what it does here...

I was reporting that armbian-config seemed broken a little so this is confusing. Did you mean "...does not do... suposed to do... "?  I was anticipating a link to a bug report - 'till I read further.

 

Q

 

UPDATE:

 

It looks like my issue boils down to the question: Should Webmin be available from the default sources used by Armbian? Other packages are accessible but without webmin I am inclined to find another variant where Webmin can be used easily...

If yes, how can I troubleshoot APT config? It isn't finding webmin.

If no, why? Webin seems quite popular - even in this context. It would be helpful to know why those who know Armbian best would want to avoid having it on the platform. 

 

Q

1 hour ago, Quanta said:

I was reporting that armbian-config seemed broken a little so this is confusing. Did you mean "...does not do... suposed to do... "?  I was anticipating a link to a bug report - 'till I read further.

 

Funny how a missing word changes things - anyways - as far as I can see - armbian config is fine here...

 

Quote

It looks like my issue boils down to the question: Should Webmin be available from the default sources used by Armbian?Other packages are accessible but without webmin I am inclined to find another variant where Webmin can be used easily...

If yes, how can I troubleshoot APT config? It isn't finding webmin.

If no, why? Webin seems quite popular - even in this context. It would be helpful to know why those who know Armbian best would want to avoid having it on the platform. 

 

You won't find it in either the stretch (debian) or the bionic (ubuntu) repos as Webmin is not part of those upstream repositories...

 

You can download the deb file direct from the webmin site, and try to install it - not sure how it'll do with dependencies... (it needs Java, along with other items) - general walkthru here on Tecmint...

 

MIght also consider cockpit - it's similar in many ways, and it is in the ubuntu bionic repos, so apt will see it...

 

https://cockpit-project.org/index.html

 

hth...

 

Thanks SFX2k

 

Will look into cockpit. There are some things I am not comfortable with about Webmin so here's hoping. Also thanks for Tecmint. Will check out. I had tried installing from a local package but it didn't go well. Can't remember details.

 

I don't mean to be pedantic but as far as armbian-config goes, I still can't find a place to specify DNS servers for a manual IP config under the Network/IP or Network/Advanced tab.  Those are the only two places it ought to be by my experience and no option when doing a manual IP config seems, well, less than optimal.  If when you say "fine here" you mean you can manually config IP and set DNS servers within armbian-config,  then I need to pursue this further. Something is broken somewhere. If this is the way it is supposed to be, perhaps I could contribute some additions to the documentation when I get time.  

 

When I have a bit more time, I will edit the first post and indicate solved etc. 

 

Q

Fix

• DNS not part of problem - My error.
• Webmin install candidate not found. Repos not included in armbian install. Add them.
  • The instructions to do this are here http://www.webmin.com/deb.html 
  • I used nano to edit /etc/apt/sources.list file to add the repository shown in the link.
• Webmin dependency apt-show-versions not installing / breaking webmin install.
  • Apparently, the issue was apt-show-versions was in some way impacted by having compressed files somewhere 'nearby'. Deleting with rm as below allowed process to complete.

cd /var/lib/apt/lists

rm *.lz4

apt-get -o Acquire::GzipIndexes=false update

apt-get install apt-show-versions

 

 Success!

 

apt-get install --fix-broken webmin

...

 The following additional packages will be installed:

   libauthen-pam-perl libio-pty-perl libnet-ssleay-perl perl-openssl-defaults The following NEW packages will be installed:

   libauthen-pam-perl libio-pty-perl libnet-ssleay-perl perl-openssl-defaults

   webmin

0 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Need to get 16.2 MB of archives.

After this operation, 174 MB of additional disk space will be used.

Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y

...Setting up webmin (1.900) ...

Webmin install complete. You can now login to https://HAL_Mk1:10000/ as root with your root password, or as any user who can use sudo to run commands as root.

Processing triggers for systemd (232-25+deb9u6) ...

 

Usin a web browser, Log in to webmin at the board's IP or host name:10000 (192.168.xxx.xxx:10000). Go to system>bootup and shutdown within webmin and you will see webmin among the entries there. Check that webmin is loaded at startup.

You can change to not load after your system is configured to your satisfaction to lessen load. At that point it is fairly easy to ssh into system and start webmin from command line later when needed.

 

As I have said before, what follows is not complaining. It is merely an assessment of an area where I see some room for improvement. I think it is worth saying especially for the sake of those with limited time to invest and those trying to get started. Also, I think I understand that these issues aren't directly issues with armbian but they have the potential to have significant impact on adoption.

 

I hope that the armbian devs can adjust things so that:

• Webmin is available to install more easily.
• The issue with compressed files goes away.

In my case, I lost a lot of time trying to get past this that could have been spent in any number of more positive ways, many of which would benefit armbian. I wouldn't mind preparing some changes for the site to address this and some other issues I see but that will have to wait 'till I make up some lost time - how does that happen... 

 

Thanks to all and here's to the success of the devs of Armbian going forward!

 

Q