networking disabled on laptop running ubuntu 16.10

[M. Fioretti]

On 2016-11-10 16:17, Liam Proven wrote:
> On 10 November 2016 at 13:37, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> 
> wrote:
>> Today I did, and found out that
>> lspci -k | grep -EA2 'Eth|Net' does list both Wifi chip (Broadcom
>> Corporation BCM4313,  and the Ethernet controller (Realtek RFL8101)
>> 
>> but networkctl -a only lists the lo interface, and
> 
> 
> Connect a USB Ethernet or Wifi adaptor and do a full system upgrade?
> 
> Also, upgrade your firmware, if possible?

Hi Liam,

First, a sincere, general question: upgrading firmware doesn't hurt, of 
course,
but WHY should it make a difference in this specific case, where 
everything
still works fine under windows, and (afair, at least) no upgrade was 
done that could
have caused settings to be messed up?

In addition, your question made me remember that, before I had this 
problem,
I *had* tried to upgrade the firmware from windows, but that failed for 
some
reason I've since forgotten. But even after that attempt, for some time 
Ubuntu COULD
find and use the ethernet and wifi.

About the full system upgrade: even if a USB ethernet or wifi
adaptor would be detected by a system currently broken as this,
I'm afraid is not a viable option. For family reasons this machine
can't be moved from home right now, but at home we have only a VERY slow
instable connection. Fetching the necessary packages or any other files 
from another computer/place,
and then feeding them to this laptop via an USB drive is doable though.

Sorry to make your job more difficult, er I meant interesting, but in 
these
days I'm pretty much stuck like this :-(

 From a geekier, want-to-refresh-my-skills angle: isn't there any way
to diagnose/fix this thing at the command line, with what already is
on the laptop? That is, running commands at the prompt, editing config 
files..

That's what I tried to do for a couple days before posting, but I admit
my memory is a bit rusty, and I could not find anything relevant to 
refresh it.

Thanks,

Marco
-- 
http://mfioretti.com