If you have it working now you can configure the connection that way and then you will see how it creates the ifcfg- files.

The name will be your login name for your isp, the connection is ppp over ethernet so it is just like dialup, you must login even though it's tunnelled trough the ethernet connection.

I would configure the interface to come up on boot. You should see the option in the configuration.


If your dialup is configured another way then the ppp0 will not show as active. You can configure that connection as well, using the redhat-config-network tool.

It's very unlikely that the ppp ip address would need to be set manually, the eth interface needs no ip address.

OK, well, today is the day my DSL service should be turned on.
I've tried a couple things to connect and nothing has worked so far.
With redhat-config-network, I tried activating my eth0 connection
and when that didn't work, I tried to create a new xDSL connection.
I think the creation there was OK but I wasn't able to activate it (it couldn't find the IP address). I'm going to give the support people at SBC a call
but I'm afraid they'll tell me to go out and buy a Windows box....

Hi again. I did talk to an SBC support person. He told me that if my network adapter is enabled, then I should be able to visit their modem
registration site---he gave me the URL---and register myself manually.
I have to do this using DSL, not my dialup.

How do I know if my network adapter is enabled? And if it is, is there
some other obvious thing I need to do in order to browse the internet using DSL (analogous to using kppp to initiate a connection with my dialup service)? I tried just entering the URL in my browser but got an error message.

Thanks.

to see if the interace is up use this

ifconfig eth0
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:55 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:28306 (27.6 Kb)


That interface is currently down.


Now I will bring it up like this.

ifconfig eth0 up


Now to check it..

ifconfig eth0
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
inet6 addr: fe80::2c0:9fff:fe1f:321a/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:57 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:28454 (27.7 Kb)





The interface has no ip address, which I don't think it will need one. THe ppp interface should be brought up and it will get an ip address.


ifup ppp1


You should enable debugging and check the log file, /var/log/messages.

Hello again. The DSL connection seems to be established now, but it's much slower than I expected!
It takes mozilla a long time to resolve hostnames and
transfer data. Sometimes it simply gives up---it told me a couple of times that it couldn't find www.linuxquestions.org. FWIW, here's the output of
ifconf eth0:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:A0:CCA:03:0D
inet addr:192.168.0.64 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:21445 errors:137 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:20671 errors:566 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:507
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:11287373 (10.7 Mb) TX bytes:3263629 (3.1 Mb)
Interrupt:5 Base address:0x1f00

I don't know how to read that. Are the errors
significant?

Thanks for your help.

I would not say it's normal but it's not really too bad to have a few errors. Make sure your cable is good if you have a spare one try it.

As far as being slow to open sites and resolving issues you may try this.


Run these commands


ifconfig eth0 mtu 1412



in the file, ifcfg-ppp1 comment out this line..

CLAMPMSS=1412

like this

# CLAMPMSS=1412


Then restart the ppp interface and check it out.

make sure ifconfig eth0 shows MTU: 1412


You should probably visit dslreports.com and try the tweek tests.

Er---what exactly does it mean to "restart the ppp interface"?

I made the changes you suggested re ifconfig eth0
and ifcfg-ppp1, but when I did ifconfig eth0 some time later the mtu was back to 1500. Is there a more permanent way to change it?

The browser is sometimes OK and sometimes very slow. What's almost always bad is the ssh connection to my shell account. It takes forever to establish the connection and then after a few minutes the connection seems just to die. I spent 3 hours trying to send an e-mail but I kept losing the connection.

I tried editing /etc/resolve.conf and putting my ISP's DNS server IPs. FWIW, here's the output of
netstat -rna:

Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface
192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0


Thanks for your help.

Restart the interface would be to deactivate the connection and then reconnect so the settings in the ifcfg-ppp1 file will be read.

The eth0 interface will default to 1500. you need to set the mtu like this for it to be used after the eth0 interface is restarted.


The file is ifcfg-eth0, the setting is..

MTU=1412






Be sure about the nameservers in /etc/resolv.conf then you should run the firewall tool to setup the nameservers in it after the connection is started.

To restart the interface, is it enough to deactivate and reactivate eth0 in redhat-config-network? ppp1 always shows "inactive" anyway.

The firewall I'm using is lokkit. As far as I can tell, it doesn't offer any
opportunity to set up the nameservers. When I look at the DNS section of redhat-config-network, it shows what I think are the correct addresses for my ISP.

Thanks.

When you have the connection established run lokkit. After that run this..

iptables-save

The output is the same as the contents of /etc/sysconfig/iptables.

The nameservers should be seen in the rules shown and the addresses should match those in /etc/resolv.conf.

I would think that by restarting the eth0 and ppp1 interfaces your settings should be used but you can check it with ifconfig.


The problem you are having with mail and some sites is almost certainly the MTU setting.

Thanks. I actually just started a new thread in the networking forum,
since my problems aren't with the installation any more.

BTW, could you tell me what the mtu 1412 and CLAMPMSS=1412
is all about? I couldn't say for sure how much of a difference these changes have made. Sometimes the connection will seem fine for a few minutes at a time but then the browser will freeze and dig/ping commands start timing out saying "server not found".

Thanks very much for all your help. Oh and BTW, I've visited that site you mentioned with the tweak tests but I haven't been able to run them---not sure whether it's a java problem or whether there are already too many people running them.

J

Hello. I started using my other network card and all of a sudden the connection was just fine. Here's hoping it will last! Anyway, thank you very much for your patient help.

That's cool.

I have seen a few problems with network cards before but they are pretty rare. Good thing you had another one.

The MTU setting determines the max size of a transmitted packet...

MaximumTransmitUnit

The clamp MSS is pretty common for DSL due to the nature of the connection. In order to send packets through the ethernet connection they have to be decreased in size to allow room for the TCP headers. Clamping is a way of fragmenting the packets so they will fit. The is handled by the connection software and can be a strain on the CPU of a slow computer. By manually setting the MTU to a working size you basically restrict the size of the packet that is passed through the connection.

I just thought it may be something to try in case the Clamping was not working for some reason. The result of it not working would be that sending email will not work and some websites will not load.


It does seem that the errors you saw with ifconfig before were causing major problems and were probably occurring at the times when you said the connection was not working. It might also be that the card would work better when connected to another network instead of the Modem so you may be able to use it anyway if you decide to share the connection. Then I guess it could be bad. I have about ten of those same cards and have not seen a bad one or one with errors like that yet.