You have a possible problem with php5-curl installation.
Please do exactly what I posted before your post, in particular the upgrade_minera.sh script
I tried what you said (twice actually) and it still hasn't shown up yet. Any other ideas?
Let me understand, is it working everything on that RPi but Mobileminer app? Could you check the application/logs/*.php? You should see some lines telling you it's trying to contact MM every minute. Look at it if there are some errors.
For the problem with the guy who disconnect the network and he's not able to login anymore, I think that's a network problem, not a Minera problem/bug/issue. If you disconnect the main router you (your pc) could have problems finding the right route to the RPI (indeed you get a minute or two to get in ssh), probably also the Ethernet HUB could be the problem, an hub doesn't remember routes neither save anything to regain them.
You can try this too. Instead disconnecting the router LAN cable, try to remove the router WAN cable, so you haven't the internet but everything else should work fine. As soon as you disconnect the router LAN cable too, you start having problems. This is because your hardware still looking at the router (it has the main gateway set to it and it is unreachable) but can't find it. Remember also that probably it's your router to give you the IP and net config via DHCP, so this is another issue to eventually look at.
For the network issue, try assigning a static IP to the Rpi. The hub itself shouldn't be a problem since all it does it broadcast the packet to all it's connected peers, unlike the selective forwarding that a switch does based on ARP cache. The default gateway doesn't matter because the packets are directed at the local network.