Haven't been on my ascii setup for a week or so.
so I did the 'update & 'upgrade routine
installed these upgrades:: [see below]

'
did a reboot and lost my network connection.
ifconfig isn't available anymore (am I getting old?!)
ip was too confusing to me
'
ended up doing this:
sudo bash /etc/network/if-up.d/upstart .....(ethtool script didn't help??)
'
noted in my 'Linux guide'

*second reboot - works now!*
some dmesg info and console notetaking::

this is a part of the dmesg log, copied it from the console
right after logon

[    1.505647] 8139cp: 8139cp: 10/100 PCI Ethernet driver v1.3 (Mar 22,
2004)
[    1.505656] 8139cp 0000:02:05.0: This (id 10ec:8139 rev 10) is not an
8139C+ compatible chip, use 8139too
[    1.506495] 8139too: 8139too Fast Ethernet driver 0.9.28
[    1.507804] 8139too 0000:02:05.0 eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at
0xffffb0de40661c00, 00:19:21:c9:14:f6, IRQ 20
***time stamps jumped about 30 seconds with no messages

[ 44.473509] 8139too 0000:02:05.0 eth0: link up, 10Mbps, half-duplex, lpa
0x0000
[ 44.512059] floppy0: no floppy controllers found
[ 48.850748] EXT4-fs (sdb7): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro
[ 171.515112] RPC: Registered named UNIX socket transport module.
[ 171.515116] RPC: Registered udp transport module.
[ 171.515117] RPC: Registered tcp transport module.
[ 171.515119] RPC: Registered tcp NFSv4.1 backchannel transport module.
*****

My screen showed (almost verbatim)
"Configure network..... ifup: waiting for lock on /run/network/ifstate.eth0"
[waited for a time period - I think in the 30+ second gap] then reported ::
"if eth0 already configured"
[then it went on to boot up to the console
'
' ***********************************************************
installed these upgrades::
The following packages have been kept back:
eom eom-common libmate-slab0 libmate-window-settings1 mate-control-center
mate-polkit mate-polkit-common pluma pluma-common
The following packages will be upgraded:
adwaita-icon-theme apt apt-utils bind9-host dnsutils exim4 exim4-base
exim4-config exim4-daemon-light host libapt-inst2.0 libapt-pkg5.0
libbind9-140 libc-bin libc-l10n libc6 libdns-export162 libdns162
libgcrypt20
libgnutls-openssl27 libgnutls30 libisc-export160 libisc160 libisccc140
libisccfg140 liblwres141 libopenmpt-modplug1 libopenmpt0 libperl5.24
libpulse-mainloop-glib0 libpulse0 libpulsedsp libsystemd0 libtiff5
libudev1
linux-image-4.9.0-3-amd64 linux-image-amd64 locales multiarch-support
os-prober perl perl-base perl-modules-5.24 pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils
udev
xserver-common xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-legacy
49 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 9 not upgraded.