lost ability to tether using android phone

[Bill Vance]

The command, "lsusb", _may_ give some useful initial info.

It's something that happens on all of them, including my 12.04
rig.  During bootup, various links are made, (in the /media dir),
to the various USB connections.  If you have a movie in your DVD
drive, you'll _usually_ get the name of the movie as one of the
links.  If it's a device of some sort, you _might_ get the make/
model/manufactures info, or a really odd looking, randomly
generated alphanumeric, such as the one you report below.

Further, if your device is a USB harddrive, Which received a
name like, "/Alternate", during OS install, or from a formatting
util like fdisk, then when typing, "ls /media", you might get,
"/Alternate", "USB(N)", or, "enx86fe93fa90d8".

As it kept changing for every bootup, the script I made to
find/change it for my USB hardrive, may be useful to you,
(with appropriate mods).

1st, make a simple empty text file on your dev, and give it
a handy name like, "devcheck", or you can make do with an
allready existing file, as long as it's unique between devices.

Next, you want to make a bash script that runs automatically,
with each bootup, and put in it, something like the following:


ls -1 /media >/tmp/dirlist           # makes a one column dir list

while read ADir                      # reads one dir name from list
do if [ -e /media/$ADir/devcheck ];  # see if, "devcheck", exists

       then echo "$ADir" >/tmp/Alt ; break  # if it does, store it
                                            # and exit loop
    fi
Alternate=$(cat /tmp/Alt) ; export Alternate  # make sure future
                                               # shells get the msg
done </tmp/dirlist

# You may need to add:

   'Alternative=$(cat /tmp/Alt) ; export Alternative'

  to your .bash_aliases file. Now your device can be accessed via,
"/$Alternate", as in:

   ls /media/$Alternate/path/name

It's from a long time ago, and a little convoluted, and could
probably use a bit of cleaning up, bit it does work.

Bill


On Thu, 17 Dec 2015, Donatas G. wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> perhaps after the latest upgrade to 15.10 my computer can no
> longer connect to internet via android mobile phone connected
> via usb cable. It used to work, and I can still do that with a
> windows computer, so the android phone is not to blame.
> 
> I recall that previously ifconfig would show that I am
> connecting through a usb0 device. Now it has a strange name
> "enx86fe93fa90d8"... The computer does get an IP address from
> the phone, but I can neither ping the phone itself (the
> "gateway") nor ping any website or IP address on the net. All
> the other parameters do not say a lot to me, but I am including
> those as output here below.
> 
> Anyone has encountered this problem? Any idea why it fails to
> work? Would be grateful for ideas what to do next.
> 
> Below are some outputs of the relevant commands.
> 
> Sincerely
> 
> Donatas Glodenis
> 
> me at pc:~$ ifconfig
> enx86fe93fa90d8 Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 86:fe:93:fa:90:d8
>           inet addr:192.168.1.77  Bcast:192.168.1.255 
> Mask:255.255.255.0
>           inet6 addr: fe80::84fe:93ff:fefa:90d8/64 Scope:Link
>           UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
>           RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
>           TX packets:0 errors:58 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
>           collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
>           RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
> 
> eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr f0:de:f1:e5:cb:71
>           UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
>           RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
>           TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
>           collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
>           RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
>           Interrupt:20 Memory:f2500000-f2520000
> 
> lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
>           inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
>           inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
>           UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
>           RX packets:4378 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
>           TX packets:4378 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0
> carrier:0
>           collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
>           RX bytes:379363 (379.3 KB)  TX bytes:379363 (379.3 KB)
> 
> wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 8c:70:5a:24:1a:24
>           UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
>           RX packets:1884 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
>           TX packets:1522 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0
> carrier:0
>           collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
>           RX bytes:1766439 (1.7 MB)  TX bytes:296839 (296.8 KB)
> 
> me at pc:~$ ping -c 3 delfi.lt
> ping: unknown host delfi.lt
> me at pc:~$ ping -c 3 91.234.200.113 ## this is an ip of delfi.lt
> PING 91.234.200.113 (91.234.200.113) 56(84) bytes of data.
> From 192.168.1.77 icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable
> From 192.168.1.77 icmp_seq=2 Destination Host Unreachable
> From 192.168.1.77 icmp_seq=3 Destination Host Unreachable
> 
> --- 91.234.200.113 ping statistics ---
> 3 packets transmitted, 0 received, +3 errors, 100% packet loss,
> time 2014ms
> pipe 3
> 
> me at pc:~$ netstat -nr
> Kernel IP routing table
> Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags   MSS
> Window  irtt Iface
> 0.0.0.0         192.168.1.2     0.0.0.0         UG        0
> 0          0 enx86fe93fa90d8
> 192.168.1.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U         0
> 0          0 enx86fe93fa90d8
> me at pc:~$ ping -c 3 192.168.1.2
> PING 192.168.1.2 (192.168.1.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
> From 192.168.1.77 icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable
> From 192.168.1.77 icmp_seq=2 Destination Host Unreachable
> From 192.168.1.77 icmp_seq=3 Destination Host Unreachable
> 
> --- 192.168.1.2 ping statistics ---
> 3 packets transmitted, 0 received, +3 errors, 100% packet loss,
> time 2014ms
> pipe 3
> 
> me at pc:~$ cat /etc/network/interfaces
> # interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8)
> auto lo
> iface lo inet loopback
> 
> me at pc:~$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
> # Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by
> resolvconf(8)
> #     DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE
> OVERWRITTEN
> nameserver 127.0.1.1
> 
> 
> 
>