No wired connection
 

I have just installed Linux Mint 64bit Cinnamon. I love it! Except for one thing. There does not seem to be a 'Wired Connection' facility in the setup. I live in an area where broadband is poor, and the signal from my broadband router is unreliable. I dual boot with Windows 7, and Windows connects instantly to the wired connection without any set-up. I have had this lack of wired connection on other Linux distros as well. Any ideas please?

I'm assuming by "broadband" you are referring to a wire-less connection? If so, the terms are not the same. If you have an Ethernet network interface card (or most often these days they are built on to the motherboard) with a physical connection to a switch, hub, or router, then you probably need to just configure the network setup. I'm not familiar with your OS, but on RHEL you would edit /etc/sysconfig/network and /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 for example. Then do a service network start. Have you done anything to set up your network?

Does Mint tell you there is no wired connection? Have you made sure that Mint has your network card setup? What is the output of you typing ifconfig in a terminal?

No 'wired connection'
 

Thanks for your reply. The problem is, that maybe I've been spoit with Windows in the past. When I used Windows I just connected a cable direct to the router straight into the corresponding connection on the PC, and it's always worked without doing anything at all, so I'm not in anyway familiar with how the wired connection is set up. I CAN use the broadband wireless, but it's not too hot in this part of the world, so I've always used cable when I can. It worked with XP, Millenium, and Windows 7, but never worked with a Linux distro.

Ok that's cool. When you're in mint are you using the GUI (Graphic User Interface) or the CLI (Command Line interface) I'll need to know to help you troubleshoot more, but either way you need to get to a terminal window (like the dos prompt) and just enter the command ifconfig. This command spits out networking information about your Mint install. We need to make sure there is a device probably called eth0 installed. If not, then we've found our first problem.

Thanks for your help so far. This is the reply from the command line. i hope it means more to you than it does to me!


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:671 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:671 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:61340 (61.3 KB) TX bytes:61340 (61.3 KB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 20:10:7a:96:da:be
inet addr:192.168.1.82 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::2210:7aff:fe96:dabe/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:9521 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:6789 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:4254903 (4.2 MB) TX bytes:1248841 (1.2 MB)

This is good information to learn about so we'll break it down a bit

Link encap:Local Loopback - This is your local connection to the computer, if you ping this address you just ping yourself
inet addr:127.0.0.1 - This is always (as far as I've ever seen) the network address for local
(The rest of local isn't as important for this conversation

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 20:10:7a:96:da:be - This is your wifi card and wifi card mac(HWaddr) address
inet addr:192.168.1.82 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 - This is the ipaddress of the wifi card, the broadcast address and the subnet mask address

The problem is we're not seeing your eth0 address.

Go back to the terminal and run this command

This will give us some information on if the machine has done anything at all in relation to eth0 (your wired network card)

Thanks for that, my command line is not responding. I copied it directly from your message text in the end, but got no response. Cursor just flashing at the end of the $ sign

I will have to break off now, as I will have to sort out an evening meal for the family. Thanks so far.

Well that could mean that it didn't like the command or that it didn't find anything so we can try something else.

Let's start with your computer hardware. I would assume since you have wireless you're working on a laptop what model and brand is it?

I don't know whether you received my last reply, but the command you gave me (dmesg | grep -e eth0 -e bcm) did not work. As a precaution I copied and pasted it from your message so that I knew it would be correctly spaced, but no, it still didn't work. Thanks for helping me so far.

Well, I'm actually running a desktop HP Model P6-2375-ea. I do have a laptop as well.

OK after googling your desktop type I found this information about the wired network card:

Technology: Atheros AR8161L gigabit ethernet controller

There have been issues with Atheros but I think we can get through it. If your wifi is ok enough to do updates I would let the machine download all the updates it needs then go a terminal again and type

Thanks again. it's asking me for my password. How do I type it into the terminal?

You'll just type it in, but you won't see anything to let you know that you're typing it in.

Response from terminal
 

I am the only user. Does this mean it doesn't recognise the password?


sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-cw-3.6-3.5.0-18-generic sbardun20
[sudo] password for daven:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package sbardun20