Hello all, here's come another network newbie question... I've just installed Knoppix on a hard drive, so essentially it is Debian. I've did my homework and tried to read previous posts; but no luck. I have a dual boot system, Windows XP boots and loads network parameters without no problems, it automatically obtains all the network values from my cable modem. My other partition, on the the other hand, is being a bit of a pill. Think the drivers are being loaded correctly (sis900), here's my "ifconfig eth0"

root@chad:/home/knoppix# ifconfig eth0
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:40:CA:49:8E:68
BROADCAST PROMISC MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1324 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:10 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:82646 (80.7 KiB) TX bytes:3420 (3.3 KiB)
Interrupt:19 Base address:0xec0

... and here's my "lsmod"

root@chad:/home/knoppix# lsmod
Module Size Used by Not tainted
autofs4 8756 0 (unused)
af_packet 13448 0
nls_iso8859-1 2844 1
ntfs 51168 1
msdos 4652 0 (unused)
agpgart 38296 0 (unused)
i810_audio 25064 0
ac97_codec 11884 0 [i810_audio]
soundcore 3428 2 [i810_audio]
sis900 12428 0
crc32 2816 0 [sis900]
serial 51972 0
keybdev 1696 0 (unused)
hid 21380 0 (unused)
mousedev 3832 0 (unused)
input 3168 0 [keybdev hid mousedev]
usb-ohci 18184 0 (unused)
usbcore 57472 0 [hid usb-ohci]
apm 9768 1
rtc 6908 0
and here's my "interfaces" file

root@chad:/home/knoppix# cat /etc/network/interfaces
# /etc/network/interfaces -- configuration file for ifup(8), ifdown(8)

# The loopback interface
# automatically added when upgrading
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp


please help....

Hmmm, your NIC is in promiscuous mode which is a little strange... Have you tried simply assigning a static IP and seeing if that works?

ifconfig eth0 10.0.0.5 netmask 255.255.255.0
(where 10.0.0.5 is a valid IP for your subnet and 255.255.255.0 is the correct subnet).

nope, doesn't work

what does promiscuous mode means?

how do I make sure DHCP is activated on my machine?

can somebody post an output from your "interfaces" file, "ifconfig eth0" and "lsmod".

Also, Is there a way to test your network card/drivers without actually having to connect to the network? sounds like a nonsence questions, but just curious.

is there a single tool, something like netconf, but for KDE that I can download to set up my network?

The fact that I cannot get online with Linux partition is a bummer. How come there's no one tool to takes care of all that?!

Your interfaces file looks fine, and the drivers are being loaded. Is this machine on a LAN or is it directly connected to the internet? If it's on a LAN make sure you're using a dhcp server.

the machine is connected straight to the cable modem. Like i said, it boots and runs network drivers in Windows XP.

when I run "dmesg | grep eth0" i get this output...

eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 0.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 1.
eth0: Realtek RTL8201 PHY transceiver found at address 2.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 3.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 4.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 5.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 6.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 7.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 8.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 9.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 10.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 11.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 12.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 13.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 14.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 15.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 16.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 17.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 18.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 19.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 20.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 21.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 22.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 23.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 24.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 25.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 26.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 27.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 28.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 29.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 30.
eth0: Unknown PHY transceiver found at address 31.
eth0: Using transceiver found at address 31 as default
eth0: SiS 900 PCI Fast Ethernet at 0xec00, IRQ 19, 00:40:ca:49:8e:68.