I was having issues with my Ethernet connection dropping out from time to time on most days though it does appear to be a bit better recently. You have to disconnect Network Manager leave for several seconds and then reconnect; sometimes a couple of times. (I thought that I may have to reinstall the network.) Looking into this on-line it states that Ubuntu 20.04 uses Netplan. However to me it looks like POP OS does not though the infrastructure is there. It also stated that when Netplan is used then the commands like “ifconfig” are deprecated and don’t. Well on my machine it does but then maybe I installed at some time.
If I run the command : cat /etc/netplan/.yaml
It returns
cat: '/etc/netplan/.yaml’: No such file or directory
From that it would appear that I have the wrong driver in the kernel, but then maybe r8169 is used for RTL8111/8168/8411. However I noticed online that people in the past have had issues with the r8169 driver so maybe I need to investigate changing the driver used. Another bit of investigation.
To be honest I don’t think that it has anything to do with Network Manager as it always stays on, but nothing working. The logical one is that it is a port NIC driver issue. (I migrated this from another motherboard and it occurred on that as well.) Now it occurs sometimes once or twice a day, other times never. We all love intermittent faults! When it happens I am always in the middle of things so it’s more important to get it going again and as it only takes a minute or two that is acceptable. I have checked past logs but so far nothing jumps out. I am in the process of checking everything else out but as it happens and is resolved quickly that means I need to have something setup ready. The other logical place is the switch as the router and wifi continues to work. Just found out that this particular Netgear switch does not like being firmware updated in Linux using Firefox, Chromium or Vivaldi and as it doe not have a TFTP feature cannot use that either.
BTW the NetPlan query was just that out of curiosity as I was pretty sure it didn’t based on my investigation even though based on Ubuntu 20.04
Just an update. I think that the issue is/was with my Netgear Smart Switch. I have had for some period of time where it would only hold it’s IP address for thirty minutes or so and you had to restart or reset it. Neither ideal. I tried updating the firmware via three different browsers in Linux and it won’t update. (Looked on-line and a few people about three years ago mentioned that some Netgear products including some switches would only update under Windows.) Now the switch cannot be connected to and won’t do anything with restart and reset doesn’t work at all. The switch has a 5 year warranty and though this shows up under my Netgear registrations as that and when I contacted support they acknowledged that they appear to want to ignore it even though only 12 months old. Another switch needs to be ordered and I’ll try to make a claim via Amazon.
To be honest this is my worst experience with Netgear. I have had loads of Netgear products personally over the years and when I was a Network Manager besides a couple of CISCO routers and a dedicated VoiP system virtually all our Managed Switches, with the odd Smart Switch, were Netgear amounting to many thousands of £.