hi everyone,

I'm still a newbie to linux, so bare with me.

I just installed the unofficial sarge version of Debian for amd64 on my Compaq Presario R3230CA laptop and I'm having a very hard time getting the internet running on it.

I usually use wireless on this laptop but until I can get an internet connection on it I can't download the necessary drivers. So I've hardwired it from my router to the laptop directly.

During the installation debian detected the right ethernet card, RealTek RTL-8139, but couldn't connect to my router's DHCP network. But no internet connection and my router is not detecting a connection from the laptop either. I've even connected the internet directly to my laptop (bypassing the router) and still nothing. I'm assuming the RealTek RTL-8139 card is not functioning as it should.

Any suggestions on how I can check if it's enabled or any other suggestions on how to get it running? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

What happens when you bring up the interface? Does eth0 appear when you run ifconfig? Wether the card works or not you won't be able to use the interface until it's up.

When I run ifconfig eth0 is not there. So I typed:

This enabled it. However, still no internet connection .

OK, the interface comes up and has an address. That's good. To get to the internet you need to also set a gateway. You're using a 192.x.x.x address and I'll assume your router's address is 192.x.x.1. The command would be like this:

/sbin/route add default gw 191.168.1.1

If the router's address is different substitute.

Thank you for the quick reply. I ran that command and got this output:

I've been googling this problem and have come across the fact that some ppl have had problem with the rtl8139 driver and have loaded the rtl8139too and have had success.

How can I check to see which driver I have installed by default?

The lsmod command will list currently loaded driver modules. also try pinging your interface address, then the router's. It could very well be the driver.

It looks like there's a problem with the actual NIC card itself. It's having problems in Windows as well.

So for the past 3 hrs I've been trying to get my broadcom wireless NIC to work. Again, I've run into walls.

Since I have absolutely no internet connection on my laptop I downloaded and burned ndiswrapper-1.3rc1.tar.gz and the 64-bit_Broadcom_54g_Drivers.zip drivers from my desktop onto a CD and put them in my /home directory on my laptop. Then I ran these commands:

When I use the make command I get the following error:

Where would I find the kernel sources for ndiswrapper?

ndiswrapper is looking for the source tree files for your kernel. And it's telling you that if you know the path to it to use the KSRC=/path/to/src option with the make command, like:

make KSRC=/lib/modules/2.6.8-11-amd64-k8/build

But ndiswrapper is already looking in this path and not finding it. It might be that you don't have the source installed and have to download it.

OK, I FINALLY got everything installed in regards to ndiswrapper. The problem was that I didn't install kernel-headers.

Now, I don't have X installed yet because I want to get my wireless internet running first so I get get apt-get downloading from the debain servers.

Now how do I actually get the wireless card to connect to the net? Please help this newbie.

So now your NIC and router are talking to each other. Good. To reach the internet you just need a couple more things. I could be wrong. I still use dial-up and am not real familiar with cable/DSL setups. Assuming the modem is plugged into the router, try this:

1) set the router as the gateway like this: route add default gw 192.168.1.1 (again, if your routers address is different susbtitute)

2) you'll need to add DNS server addresses to the /etc/resolv.conf file

To find out if you're getting to the internet try to ping an IP address outside your network. To find out if DNS is working try to ping a URL.