Internet always cuts out

Question

I'm using my Raspberry Pi to set up a simple Apache Web Server using these instructions. The problem I am having is that the Web Server will come up for a little while but then seem to just stop working. I have connected my Raspberry Pi to the internet via an ethernet cable hooked up to my router.

I have sorted out forwarding of ports so that I can navigate to pi.mywebsite.com and it works fine. However, it works fine for about a minute after booting, then it just stops; ifconfig.me doesn't work and even accessing the Raspberry Pi over SSH doesn't work.

More information: When the Raspberry Pi stops being able to connect to the internet the Pi still works fine. I can hook it up to a monitor and keyboard and fiddle about with commands and stuff. It doesn't even seem that hot (it has been a lot warmer and not crashed before).

Even more information: My Raspberry Pi is overclocked at the Modest setting and the GPU was given 128Mb.

When it cuts out and I run curl ifconfig.me the following is outputted:

curl (6) couldn't resolve host 'ifconfig.me'

Here is the output when I run ifconfig. Sorry about the quality. It's legible.

Why is this? And is there anything I can do to stop this error from happening?

Answer 1

Firstly try and update to the latest firmware.

sudo apt-get install rpi-update
sudo rpi-update
#once complete reboot the Pi

After reboot just to make sure do repo update

apt-get update  

Try and put the over-clock mode into normal position and set the GPU RAM to 32MB on Model B and on Model A put it to 8MB. If it is going to run headless you don't need GPU RAM.

Try and use some networking patches. in /etc/sysctl.conf

vm.min_free_kbytes = 8192

if the problem still continues try

smsc95xx.turbo_mode=N

Sometimes USB devices clash with the Network (Because network is connected via USB) Try and disconnect all USB devices.

A massive pain in the neck are SD cards. They might seem fine to write and read but sometimes they just do not want to work. Try and get a recommended SD card - I have experienced issues with SD, MMC and even normal USB drives acting as Operating System drives on various hardware and using hand full of different OS's. Just get a few different ones.

Try and use a completely different power supply. Just because it says 1A does not mean it can really handle it. Some el cheap'os are a pain in the but and after a few hours start to loose power because of poor design. The best power supply is a switching power supply for about 5~15 bucks delivered. They are also more power efficient.

I doubt Apache is the root of the problem but lets tickle our fancy; Try go and install the base version of nginx (engine-x) Make sure you stop a-patch-me first to free port 80. (Its is allot faster than a-patch-me anyway and you can compile allot of cool things into it)

apt-get install nginx

Answer 2

So it seems that the Raspberry Pi (or the Raspbian distro) cuts out the internet after a period of inactivity.

This is easily fixed with the following cron job:

* * * * * ping -c 1 www.google.com

Answer 3

I set up networking in a hurry following this wiki on how to setup the /etc/network/interfaces that I got from here which confused the bejayshus out of me even though i've been setting up networks for years.

This problem is caused by incorrect configuration of the /etc/network/interfaces. Assuming that you have a wired connection,

Try using a configuration like:

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet manual
wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
iface default inet dhcp

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.4
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1
up route add default gw 192.168.1.1
down route del default gw 192.168.1.1

This I found worked for me as a starting network configuration template. You will need to alter the ip addresses appropriately for your network. If you use DHCP, try:

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet manual
wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
iface default inet dhcp

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

I hope that is enough to get you started. After changing these settings and rebooting the raspberry pi, the problem disappeared.