Ethernet Controller Driver deleted/corrupted/not working

Support & Help Requests
1

I somehow either deleted or corrupted the driver that runs the ethernet connection for my motherboard and I'm not sure how this happened. I know this is what happens because my internet works on my other devices and I live booted another distro and the internet connection was stable.

Is there a way to fix this or do I need to hunt down the appropriate driver file to fix this issue?

Computer Specs:

Computer model: HP EliteDesk 800F1 TWR (tower)
CPU: Intel i7-4790 (8) @ 4,000 GHz
GPU: Intel HD Graphics

2

lspci | grep Ethernet should should you the onboard ethernet device. Mine is Realtek.

lsmod | grep real shows the modules loaded that match real.
Maybe some module is missing.

3

The Ethernet controller is this: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection I217-LM (rev 04)

When I run lsmod | grep Ethernet Connection I217, I see no results. That tells me that it probably somehow got deleted. lol

4

It may be a missing module, like you said. I ran lsmod | grep intel and I found a bunch of different files. None of them seem to line up with being the ethernet controller

5

maybe reinstall your kernel which will bring the all the modules.
or install the e1000 driver from Intel

download the driver from https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/15817
make install in the src folder
rmmod e1000e
modprobe e1000e
and to make the new driver survive a reboot update-initramfs -u
6

How would I reinstall the kernel? Do I just do I just download it from somewhere and use that to patch the system?

My system is running kernel 5.13.0-37 generic

7

Since I don't know what you did to your system (all I read is onboard Ethernet does not work) , I throw suggestions. You mentioned a live usb boots up and Ethernet works, right?

If the kernel modules were messed up, then by reinstalling the kernel you will get the full /usr/src/linux-headers-{uname -r} tree and rebooting that kernel may fix the issue.

dpkg -l | grep linux-image-.*-generic
sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-image-5.X.Y-ZZ-generic

Or you can try booting an older kernel.

8

I'm not sure what I did either. lol. I can't even hotspot my desktop computer. the internet just doesn't connect at all because of this.

When I run the second command you typed, it keeps trying to access the files from the internet instead of pulling them from somewhere saved on the computer. If there is a copy of the kernel saved on the computer somewhere, I should be able to reinstall it like that. I think

9

run sudo apt autoremove to keep the latest 3 kernels. Another idea is to change the sym.link vmlinuz to point to the previous kernel, run sudo update-grub, and reboot.

can you paste ls -l /boot ... also, ls -l /usr/src/

10

Screenshot at 2022-03-25 09-14-18
Screenshot at 2022-03-25 09-14-18963×322 68.3 KB

11

Screenshot at 2022-03-25 09-14-49

12

Reboot and in GRUB menu select the 35 kernel or point vmlinuz to 35, update-grub, and reboot. See if any of those kernels enable your Ethernet (Wired connection 1).

13

Here's an update. Turns out it wasn't the driver that was messed up, it's just a DNS problem, which I don't know how to solve either. lol

Thank you for your patience in helping me try to figure this out.