Alright,

I am brand new to Linux and am about to start a class at school so I wanted to be prepared. I am running a dual boot system, XP and Fedora 4. I wanted to have Fedora 4 ready for school use, but it will not access the internet. I have tried using the network configuration tool, but my ethernet card is not on the list of cards. I have a Dell Dimension E510, and the card is an Intel PRO/100 VE. It won't automatically detect the card on startup, and everytime I try to access a website it says "Website not found." Any help would be appreciated.

Congratulations on your upcoming class. Speaking as someone who just earned my RHCE, I can say it is a blast.

If you know how to open a terminal, then do so and "su -". You will be prompted for the root password. Type "ifconfig -a" and post here. It will look something like this:

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:1349 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1349 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1556643 (1.4 MiB) TX bytes:1556643 (1.4 MiB)

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:10:C6:CE:A84
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:185

"lo" is your local loopback adapter and we don't have to worry about that. "eth0" is your 1st local network adaptor. If it shows up, then Fedora recognized your nic. You will notice from my post that eth0 shows no rx packets and no ip address. This means it is there, but has not been configured. If you are comfortable with vi or vim, then the easiest way to configure you card is to edit the config file from the command line. If you are not comfortable with vi use the second example (gedit) and after you get your network up start practising vi by typing vimtutuor on the command line.

Type the following at a command prompt.

example with vi:

[root@station02 ~]# vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

example with gedit: (use gedit if not familiar with vi)

[root@station02 ~]# gedit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

You should see something like this.

IPV6INIT=no
ONBOOT=no
USERCTL=yes
PEERDNS=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
DEVICE=eth0
HWADDR=00:10:c6:ce:a8:d4
BOOTPROTO=dhcp

In my example since I use dhcp, all I would have to do is change "ONBOOT=no" to "ONBOOT=yes". Then type "service network restart" on the command line.

If you use static ip's, then add the lines "IPADDR=192.168.1.0" and "NETMASK=255.255.255.0". Substitute you ip's of course. Then type "service network restart" on the command line.

This should get you going. If not, then post the results of "ifconfig -a" and we'll go from there. Hopefully I have not talked down to you. You haven't given me any hints as to your level of understanding in Linux.

Congratulations again on your upcoming class. What kind of class is it?