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Setting System eth0 to go online automatically at boot

by Walter Francis — last modified Jun 28, 2010 10:22 PM

A design decision was made in Fedora 11 to not put the network devices online by default at login time. The user is required to manually put the devices online, and then manually set them to come online on subsequent boots. A bug was logged, but the decision was made that it was set this way by design, and hopefully there are further enhancements to improve the user experience in this regard coming in Fedora 12, but didn't make it into 12 or 13, now maybe 14...

Applicable to Fedora Versions

  • Fedora 11, 12, 13.....

Requirements

There are no specific requirements, although it is always suggested that you perform a yum update after any upgrade or fresh installation.  In this case, it requires you at least follow some of this guide to be able to go online to be able to perform updates.

Notes

In all cases, eth0 is a generic interface by which you connect to the internet.  It could be eth1 if you have multiple devices, wlan0, etc.  You might need to experiment a bit if you are not sure.

Doing the Work

In the first section, we will enable System eth0 and go online, then verify connectivity.

  1. Find the NetworkManager applet icon in your toolbar and left-click it.  It's the icon of the two computers and likely has a red X on it, at the top of the screen.
Network Manager Applet; go online.
  1. After you click the icon, and click System eth0
  2. If it appears to have connected and gone online, verify with Firefox or other network software that you are online.  If so, continue to the next section.  If this did not automatically allow you to go online, you may need to do additional research.  If you're using wireless, you might need drivers, or you might just need to check your network connections.

Doing the Work; go online by default

In this section, we will set System eth0 to go online by default.

  1. Right click the NetworkManager applet icon in your toolbar, same location as before except this time it probably doesn't have the red X there unless you did not set it to go online previously.  When you right-click the applet, you get the following menu.  On that menu, click the Edit Connections line as circled.
Network Manager; Edit Connections
  1. Once you have clicked Edit Connections, you will see the following screen.  Now click the System eth0 line which will turn blue, then click the Edit buttons.
Network Manager; Network Connections
  1. Once you have clicked the Edit button, you arrive at this screen.  Check the Connect Automatically button, then click the Apply button and close any other Network Manager windows.

 Network Manager; Set to Connect Automatically

  1. Your network should now automatically go online at every reboot and login!

Troubleshooting

How to test

You should now be online and go online automatically when you login to your desktop on subsequent boots.  You can reboot your system to verify this.  If it does not, verify you completed the second section above.

Common problems and fixes

Not Applicable to this guide.

More Information

There was much discussion on this issue, but I will not make this guide into a soapbox.  Hopefully in Fedora 12 (or possibly rolled in via a Fedora Unity Respin) there will be additional configuration during the installation, or the firstboot post-install procedure, in order to automatically have your network devices go online without having to do any of the above.

Disclaimer

We test this stuff on our own machines, really we do. But you may run into problems, if you do, come to #fedora on irc.freenode.net

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