Description of problem: Firefox always starts up in offline mode, and gpk-application always complains that no network connection is available ("Cannot install when offline"), even though eth0 is up and working just fine. I believe this is happening because I'm not using NetworkManager; in fact I've removed NetworkManager-gnome. The eth0 (DSL to outside world) eth1 (interface to internal network) interfaces are marked as "enable during startup" but NOT controlled by NetworkManager. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): NetworkManager: 0.7.0 Firefox: 3.0.5 gnome-packagekit: 0.3.12 How reproducible: Every time. Steps to Reproduce: 1. rpm -e NetworkManager-gnome 2. Logout 3. Login 4. Start firefox, or try to install any package via gpk-application Actual results: Firefox starts up in offline mode; gpk-application complains that the network connection is not available. Expected results: Firefox should not start up in offline mode, and gpk-application should work, because the network is up and running and doing just fine. Additional info: I apologize if these are separate bugs, but I strongly suspect the problem is that these apps think they should check NetworkManager. Note that while I can simply disable offline mode for Firefox, gpk-application basically does not work AT ALL, because I don't see a way to convince it that the network is indeed up. I have to do everything on the command line via yum.
NetworkManager is intended to control your primary network connection. It sounds like NetworkManager isn't doing that in your case. If you're not using NetworkManager, I'd suggest disabling the service entirely with: sudo /sbin/chkconfig NetworkManager off sudo /sbin/service NetworkManager stop When NetworkManager is running, firefox and packagekit will ask NetworkManager for network connection status.
Thank you, that did it!