Greetings all.

I went out of town to a region without cellular service, but I still wanted to use my N900 as a camera for the weekend, so to conserve battery I switched off the cellular radio.

Upon returning to civilization, re-enabled the cellular radio, but I'm unable to get a data connection running through it. I'm able to make and receive calls and text messages through 3G towers no problem, and I can use my home WiFi connection to access the internet without a problem, when the only internet connection is cellular data, I have no access, even pinging web addresses from xterm results in no response.

Any ideas? I haven't changed any settings such as access point name, so how can I go about troubleshooting this?

wow that sucks . . . did you try simply restarting the device . . . . or worst case scenario re-flash the firmware.

Have tried restarting, haven't tried re-flashing, was hoping there might be an easier solution.

And doh @ thread title fail...

lol " cant no longer" ...... enable then disable offline mode ...

I did try that. Additionally, I have the cellular modem control buttons addon to the powerkey menu, toggling that doesn't seem to affect things either.

Does anyone know how the control button works under the hood? I think it may somehow conflict with offline mode. Have tried toggling both options in various sequences and that doesn't seem to make any difference, but if there was a lower-level way to get at it, I'm quite happy to give that a shot.

As a last resort I could re-flash, but as this is my primary phone I'd rather keep it up and running for as long as possible.

try to delete celular data connection, restart device and enter data once again. I have problems with internet access from time to time. randomly

This seems really wierd, since 3G in general works for you. It means the cellular works as it should, and its not in offline mode either (offline mode obviously includes dropping you from cell as well).

Control Buttons simply communicate with SSC daemon the users wish to turn off the cellular, it does no magic by itself.

It looks like a software problem to me, somewhere.

What happens when you click internet connection tab in status-menu and search for connections?

What does it read in internet connection settings? Do you have autoconnect enabled, does it list your APN etc.

Luckily, the reflashing process doesn't take too long, thanks to backup and restore process. It might be faster to reflash than debug it like this...

Thanks for the comprehensive reply, tuminoid. I've just discovered something interesting though... when I'm connected to the internet through cellular data, I'm able to ping google by IP address, but not by hostname.

It appears the cellular data connection is being established but the problem lies in resolving hostnames - aside from this, all networking is acting as it should.

Anyone know where I should go from here?

1. Try to remove SIM card, switch On, then insert and try again.

2. Look into file /var/run/resolv.conf via X-Term command "cat /var/run/resolv.conf". It should have some lines like

nameserver 10.177.0.34

If it hasn't - delete that file and switch OFF-ON.

2. If doesn't help - reflash N900 - it may be not simple to debug dnsmasq problem (did you install vpnc, BTW?) - too many places and scripts and corruption any of them may switch your DNS off.

Hi Daniel,

I had the same issue today. I couldn't connect via 2G and 3G. Only Wi-Fi worked. I tried everything you wrote about. But after doing the following steps, my N900 lost and I finally won :-)
Go to "settings" - "internet connections" - "connections" ... then choose your provider's connection - click "edit" and then always push the "next" button until it's finished.
Now try connecting again. In my case it worked again and I hope, this fits yours too.

greets,
N(9)00bie