After reinstalling Precise Pangolin over Jaunty Jackolope (yah, I know, this was a linux install I did in 2008 which the owners of the computer never bothered to update) my ethernet drop on a Dell Optiplex 760 suddenly declared it was no longer managed. I at first thought it was the fault of the weird network settings they seem to use all over India– I mean, people, come on, DHCP was invented for a reason! But during the install (I was using the 12.04 alt cd) it seemed to get online fine… which apparently is what messed things up. The alt install put some stuff in /etc/network/interfaces which then was conflicting with the network manager. So I deleted everything except for

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

in /etc/network/interfaces

set managed=True in /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf

rebooted the network manager with sudo service network-manager restart,

Deleted the ethernet connection in the network manager gui, made a new one with the fancy manual DHCP settings this place favoured,

and then apt-get updated and apt-get upgraded to my heart’s content.

So that was just to let you know internet, I hope I get some kind of linux karma points now and next time I’ll be able to google whatever random problem I’m having. Ok? Here’s to looking at you, New Zealand.