hey guys. i noticed when im starting up my laptop (wireless is busted) and i dont have the ethernet cable plugged in, it doesnt seem to detect it after that. basically after slackware has already been booted, if i want to connect to the internet i have to restart it with the ethernet cable plugged in. is there anyway i can get slackware to detect and configure when i plug in my cable, or is there a command to refresh the network?

Any help would be awesome, thanks in advance!

Could you post the output of the

ifconfig

command on your machine booted with the cable unplugged? Are you using dhcp or a static IP? Normally, Slackware will detect and configure your ethernet card with or without the cable, unless you're using dhcp, in which case, of course, there's no way to get an IP without the cable.

Hi,

You should look at 'ifplugd'. 'ifplugd is a Linux daemon which will automatically configure your ethernet device when a cable is plugged in and automatically unconfigure it if the cable is pulled. This is useful on laptops with onboard network adapters, since it will only configure the interface when a cable is really connected. ifplugd interfaces with your distribution's native network configuration utilities.'

This link and others are available from 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

hey thanks onebuck that seems to be just what i need! And yes im using DHCP.

Here you go uncle_theodore

/sbin/ifconfig output:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:e0:b8:5c:05:41
inet addr:192.168.6.9 Bcast:192.168.6.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::2e0:b8ff:fe5c:541/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1081 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1026 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:891612 (870.7 KiB) TX bytes:175657 (171.5 KiB)

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:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

EDIT: ifplugd didnt seem to work, im going to try again

Well, your eth0 interface is up and even has an IP. Is it the one we are talking about? So, the problem is not in the interface.
What probably happens, when you boot with the cable unplugged, the system obviously can't get an IP from the DHCP server and assigns some other IP to the device. This IP is not valid in your network, so when you plug the cable, there's no internet access.

I would try the following:
Since you have to use DHCP you must get your IP _after_ you plug in the cable anyway. So, try to run (as root)
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 restart
right after you do that. If it still doesn't work, we'll need to look into routing and DNS issues.

Beautiful! Worked perfect, thanks alot uncle-theodore!

I love slackware (been using it for a month, used fedora for a few years before), whenever theres an issue ive been able to solve it. and even better there not really problems, usually its just a configuration thing. anyway thanks again.