GitHub Copilot Labs not working in Visual Studio Code due to DNS issues - Unable to ping external websites

Question

I recently installed Visual Studio Code to use GitHub Copilot and GitHub Copilot Labs. While GitHub Copilot seems to be working fine, I am having trouble getting GitHub Copilot Labs to work due to DNS-related issues. I discovered this problem when I tried pinging external websites like google.com, which consistently failed. However, I am able to successfully ping my gateway IP address.

Here's what I've tried so far:

1. Tested ping with different websites and external IP addresses, but none of them worked.
2. Checked my system's firewall (UFW), which is currently inactive, to ensure it wasn't blocking outgoing ICMP traffic.
3. Changed my nameservers to public DNS servers like Google (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) and Cloudflare (1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1) by modifying /etc/resolv.conf and updating network settings via the Network Manager GUI.
4. Verified that my IP address, subnet mask, and gateway are correctly configured by examining the output of ip addr show and ip route show.

Despite trying all these steps, I am still unable to resolve external domain names or use GitHub Copilot Labs in Visual Studio Code. My network configuration seems to be correct, but I cannot figure out why I'm experiencing these DNS issues.

Has anyone encountered a similar problem, or does anyone have suggestions on how to fix this issue? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Perhaps this won't be the solution or relevant for you, but I ended up here when looking for a solution for the same issue. CoPilot working just fine in VS Code, but Labs unable to connect or even sign in. Your question made me think perhaps my issue was DNS related too, which it was!

I am using a DNS-level ad-blocker and when checking the logs there was one domain for telemetry that got blocked when trying to use Labs, i whitelisted it and restarted VS Code. Tried signing in again and got it all to work.

The domain i whitelisted to make it work was the following:

copilot-telemetry.githubusercontent.com

CoPilot is able to run just fine with this blocked, but Labs seems to need it whitelisted.

Perhaps it can send you in the right direction as well? Good luck!