How to reinstall network manager without internet access?

Question

Unfortunately, I uninstalled network-manager-gnome using sudo apt-get remove --purge network-manager. I was trying to reinstall it from but without internet connection I cannot do so. What is the solution for this?

Answer 1

sudo dhclient eth0

then you will have internet and you can use...

sudo apt-get install network-manager

Answer 2

If you've recently upgraded your network manager you can use sudo apt-get install --reinstall network-manager, but this only works if the package is still in your Apt cache (/var/cache/apt/archives/). I'm guessing you haven't so you'll have to do things the long way, but I thought I'd throw that in just in case.

1. Boot a Ubuntu live CD in "Try without installing". Make sure you are connected to the internet.

2. In terminal type:

   sudo mount --bind /dev /<chrootlocation>/dev
   sudo mount --bind /proc /<chrootlocation>/proc
   sudo mount --bind /sys /<chrootlocation>/sys
   sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /<chrootlocation>/etc/resolv.conf
   sudo chroot /<chrootlocation>
   

   You will need to replace <chrootlocation> with the appropriate location of your Ubuntu install, typically the label of the partition it's installed on. The partition must also be mounted so that you can access it.

3. Edit your /etc/resolve.conf and add at least one nameserver:

   nameserver 8.8.8.8 # Google Public DNS
   

4. In terminal type:

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install network-manager
   

   If you don't you'll likely get an unable to connect error.

5. In terminal type exit. This exits you from the chroot environment.

6. In terminal type sudo reboot to reboot your computer.

Answer 3

sudo apt-get remove --purge network-manager

The above command will purge all the packages that was related to the service network-manager.You can download all packages as .deb file using a Ubuntu Live disk and then install it to your original OS.

• First boot from a Ubuntu Live disk.

• Once you go there open a terminal and run the below command,

  sudo apt-get download network-manager*
  

• This will download all the network-manager packages to the home directory.

• Now copy all the .deb packages to a folder in that pen drive or other partitions in your HDD and then reboot to your system.

• Once you go there open terminal and do the following:

  cd /path/to/the/directory/where/.deb/files/are/located
  sudo dpkg -i *.deb
  

• The above command will install all the .deb files.

• Now restart your network-manager by running sudo service network-manager restart

Now you have the package network-manager-gnome running again.

Answer 4

This answer assumes that you had internet access before losing network-manager or any other packages.

Live CD/DVD/USB

Create a bootable Ubuntu CD/DVD or USB stick, boot from it and select "Try Ubuntu without installing". Once you get to the Ubuntu desktop, open a terminal.

Root Partition

You need to find out your root partition on your Ubuntu installation. On a standard Ubuntu installation, the root partition is "/dev/sda1", but it may be different for you. To figure out what's the root partition, run the following command:

sudo fdisk -l

This will display a list of hard disks and partitions from which you'll have to figure out which one is the root partition. Below in step 3, ROOT-PARTITION is the root partition you just found, for example /dev/sda2 in my case.

Chroot Into Your Root Partition

To make sure a certain partition is the root partition, you can mount it. So let's mount the root partition along with the /sys, /proc, /run and /dev partitions and enter chroot:

sudo mount ROOT-PARTITION /mnt
for i in /sys /proc /run /dev /dev/pts; do sudo mount --bind "$i" "/mnt$i"; done
sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/etc/
sudo chroot /mnt

If you get an error about resolv.conf being identical when copying it, just ignore it. Copying resolv.conf gets the network working, at least for me (using DHCP).

Update/Install Packages

Now you can update the system - in the same terminal, type:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install network-manager network-manager-gnome

If you have problems on the last step, make sure your sources are correct in /etc/apt/sources.list - in the same terminal, type:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Since you've chrooted into your Ubuntu installation, the changes you make affect it and not the Live CD, as long as all changes are made in the same terminal session.

Reboot when finished and remove the Live CD. If this answer fixes your problem, please mark it correct. Thanks!

Answer 5

Follow official Ubuntu communuty LiveCdRecovery Update Failure section: (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCdRecovery):

1. Boot the Ubuntu Live CD.
2. Press Ctrl-Alt-F1

3. Run:

   sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
   sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
   sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
   sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
   sudo chroot /mnt
   

4. Add OpenDNS name servers to your /etc/resolv.conf to access the network after chroot:

   nameserver 208.67.222.222
   nameserver 208.67.220.220
   

5. Run:

   apt-get install network-manager
   

This helped to fix the same issue on my Ubunty 14.04LTS

Answer 6

I know I'm a little late on this but I just ran into this same problem. I installed arping (sudo apt-get install arping) which removed iputils-arping, network-manager, and network-manager-gnome. I edited the /etc/network/interface file to setup a manual IP for eth0.

# interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8)
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# below are my changes

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
    address x.x.x.x
    gateway y.y.y.y
    netmask z.z.z.z
    network a.a.a.a
    broadcast b.b.b.b
    dns-nameserver c.c.c.c d.d.d.d

Change x, y, z, a, c, and d to your network settings. I then ran "sudo service network-interface restart INTERFACE=eth0" to restart the interface. This allowed my to reinstall network manager (sudo apt-get install network-manager). I had to purge the arping package I installed before network manager would reinstall. Then start network manager (sudo service network-manager start). Once I had network manager running I changed /etc/network/interface back to default (and kept a copy of the manual change just in case). Hopefully this helps.

Answer 7

My previous answer assumes that the reason you cannot access the internet is because you uninstalled "network-manager", and that normally the computer is connnected to the internet. However on the off chance that I read your question wrong, and this is in fact a computer that isn't ever connected to the internet you will need to use this answer instead though it will be more time consuming.

Step #1 = On another computer (It can be running Windows, doesn't matter), go to "http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/network-manager". (This link assumes you are using Ubuntu 12.04, if not you will need to find the link appropriate to your version).

Step #2 = At the bottom of the web page there is a link for "amd64" and "i386", click on the approriate one. I'm using amd64 so my steps will assume that.

Step #3 = On the new page there are a bunch of mirror links that are direct download links for "network-manager_0.9.4.0-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb". Pick a link, and download the .deb file.

Step #4 = On the first url I provided it also lists the dependencies for network-manager. You may have some of these still installed, but for the ones you don't you will need to download them as well by visiting their page and selecting a mirror.

Step #5 = Once you've downloaded all the .debs you will be needing transfer them to the Ubuntu computer and put them in "/var/cache/apt/archives". You will need root privileges to do this which can be achieved with "gksu nautilus /var/cache/apt/archives". You could also use dpkg to install them, but it won't tell if you've forgetten a dependency so I'm not going to get into how to use that.

Step #6 = In terminal type "sudo apt-get install --reinstall network-manager".

Answer 8

Take a look at nm-applet crash In UBUNTU 13.04 (Raring) and 13.10 (Saucy) and a simple fix . Although it gets quite technical, it may point you in right course.

You need to use command line because what you have deleted is only GUI. Core program should still be there.

Run

$ nmcli dev

You may see something like this (from the cited link):

DEVICE     TYPE              STATE        
ttyUSB0    cdma              disconnected    
wlan0      802-11-wireless   disconnected 
eth0       802-3-ethernet    unavailable 

Run

$ nmcli con

That should give information like this (from cited link):

NAME                      UUID                                   TYPE              TIMESTAMP-REAL                    
VPN connection 1          de9fd222-7a27-4e29-ad9e-9095f953e837   vpn               never                             
LAN                       c26d0089-0f41-422a-9997-8a9b832d7159   802-3-ethernet    Saturday 26 October 2013 07:23:48 PM IST
Tata Indicom (Photon+) connection b3c0f820-7521-4eb4-8507-8c931f44d691   cdma              Tuesday 29 October 2013 04:25:28 PM IST

Then run:

$ nmcli con up b3c0f820-7521-4eb4-8507-8c931f44d691

after replacing that device_id with the device_id for your connection. If that doesn't work you can try what works for me (on my system which is 13.10):

$ nmcli con up id "DSL connection 1"

Notice it is slightly different and that quotes are needed because of spaces in DSL connection 1.

---

Just to add that you may also have copy of network-manager-gnome in /var/cache/apt/archives and you may just be able to run:

$ sudo apt-get install network-manager-gnome 

I don't know for sure but worth a try! Of course if you also ran sudo apt-get clean or sudo apt-get autoclean then chances of using the cache are zero.

Answer 9

Just solved this same problem, follow these simple steps:

1. Download network-manager in a device having internet connection from http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/n/network-manager/
   I used network-manager_1.2.2-0ubuntu0.16.04.4_amd64.deb for ubuntu16.04

2. Then transfer this file using USB or phone etc.

3. $ sudo dpkg -i network-manager_1.2.2-0ubuntu0.16.04.4_amd64.deb

Done :)

Answer 10

For me, it turned out that I accidentally deleted /etc/resolv.conf and then got the same symptoms (nslookup nba.com doesn't work, but nslookup nba.com 4.2.2.4 does work, when 4.2.2.4 was configured as my DNS server).

Restoring the file from a live USB solved the issue.

Answer 11

Manually configure your ethernet card in /etc/network/interfaces and restart the networking service. Then apt-get update.