Empy ifconfig and other problems (newbie)
 

Hi, I'm hoping to run Debian on my machine (133 Mhz with 64 MB RAM). It's *sort of* installed but with several problems I'm hoping someone can help with.

1. I tried to do the floppy + mini CD install, expecting that it would grab the rest of the distribution of the web. I'm not sure if it did this or not (don't think so because my hub activity light wasn't flashing). Now if I type "ifconfig" it prints nothing. Any ideas on how to fix this or what I've done wrong?

2. I was hoping Debian had a GUI like XFree86 but my system only seems to have command prompt. Can someone point me in the right direction for getting a GUI installed? I wasn't prompted for this during the install.

3. During the install the message "neighbour table full" was printed many times. Is this a problem or a "normal" error message that appears sometimes?

Any suggestions are much appreciated!

Thanks,

Mark

1. ifconfig shows only network interfaces that are up. Try 'ifconfig -a', it should show all the interfaces that have drivers loaded. If the list is still empty, you need to load a kernel module for your network card.

2. Yes it does, type 'apt-get install x-window-system' or use program called 'tasksel' to pick up program entities you want. (A possibility to run tasksel was in fact prompted during install).

3. Bringin up loopback interface should help. (that is: 'ifconfig lo up').

Try 'lspci' and check your net card is properly detected.
If you have a isa net card, I fear you'll have to manually configure it :(

Hi guys, thanks for the info. After a few days off I'm trying this again. From the Debian installer it can't seem to configure the network automatically (no idea why, it works under Vector Linux). From the installer I started a shell. In ifconfig there was no loopback interface, so I brought it up as the poster suggested. Seems odd that it doesn't have an IP though (127.0.0.1). My eth0 interface doesn't have an IP or netmask either. I was hoping that it would use DHCP but I haven't found any mention of how to do this in the man pages or in the Networking HOWTO. Any suggestions on how to proceed?

Thanks,
Mark

Which version are you installing?
With this http://www.phy.olemiss.edu/debian-cd/ network configuration came just after keyboard/language, and it offered option for dhcp.
Remember sarge installer is still experimental, actually this is among the main reasons why a debian 3.1 has not been released yet.

I insist you need to know wether your nic isn't deteced or your net isn't configured. Try lspci.
If your nic works, then you'll need to edit your /etc/network/interfaces

I've now gotten it to run, but only using a static IP. DHCP didn't ever work during the install (error message "failed"). So I set a static IP and managed to get the install finished. I just set it back to DHCP by editing the /etc/interfaces file, I hope I did it correctly.

Have any of you guys used Slackware? The only Linux I've used before is Mandrake and Vector Linux, so editing config files to set basic things up like this is new to me.

Thanks,
Mark

Try pinging your DHCP server from your workstation. Maybe it's not allowed to get to it...

If you can communicate with your server, and you have problems editing /etc/network/interfaces, you can re-run the config wizard with 'base-config'

Thus if I recall correctly, the base-config doen't reconfigure network because it is done in an earlier stage by dbootstrap. ;(