I looked into /etc/sysconfig/networking, and while I can't post it here, it's pretty much empty and I'm assuming that's not good. Any advice on editing this file for best chances of connectivity to be restored would be greatly appreciated.

I found the following:

# vi /etc/sysconfig/networking

# Network Details
NETWORKING=yes
HOSTNAME=mybox.example.com
GATEWAYDEV=eth1


Is this as good an entry for networking as any?

I'd like to install another web browser and see what happens, but when I try to select "internet" from the add software GUI it returns no results. A search for konqueror returns knoqueror add-ons but not the program itself... why would this be? Yum can't find konqueror either. I don't know if this is related to my network problems, but software installation makes no mention of a lost network connection.


(Now I have no internet connectivity at all after making no changes whatsoever...)

(Also linuxquestions keeps unsubscribing me from my own post so that I have to search for it... why??)

You can view a man page with
You get the idea

They are also online
http://linuxmanpages.com/
http://linux.die.net/man/
http://linux.die.net/man/8/ifconfig
http://linux.die.net/man/8/route

If you can ping ok by DNS and IP then I would say Firefox is messed up.
Do your e-mail clients and other apps like multimedia streamers, gpodder, IM clients work?
You might even try nuking Firefox and reinstalling. Or goto Mozilla, get it, install it manually.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html

Firefox isn't usually a problem to get running. It has been a tad slow because of it's javascript engine. They are changing that.
But you could have something messed up. Also just changing versions of firefox fixes things sometime. Like going form 3.6.1 to 3.6.3 or something.

Don't get discouraged. Look at it as a challenge and leaning experience rather than a pain in the back.

If you are going to use yum you will have to have your repositories set up. Do you know what I mean? If not that is something else for you to learn. You need a yum config file that tells yum where to look for software. There is Fedora, Dags, and other trusted sites for that.

Do yourself a favor and do some reading and let that Fedora box sit if you have a working windows box.
Read up on networking, yum, howto install from source, howto install a .rpm package, howto avoid dependency problems(use your pkg mgr.),the directory tree structure of Linux, the x server.

When you get yum setup it is a simple as
http://www.google.com/search?q=confi...ient=firefox-a
Configuring network is as simple as setting the IP address, the netmask, and a route to the outside internet. Also called nameserver.

http://tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/
http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/
http://www.linuxpackages.net/
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/colla...s/openprinting
http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz
http://sourceforge.net/
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/resourc...-tutorial.html
http://lnag.sourceforge.net/
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/...ndows_software
http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200612/200612.htm

teckk-- Thanks, it's helpful to be realistic in that there's a lot to learn. I'm interested in Linux for a lot of reasons but that doesn't mean it should automatically be easy to use from the gate.

I added rpmfusion repo (http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration) and installed some things:
--knoqueror is just as slow as firefox
--pidgin seems to log in ok but I haven't tested chat yet
--I'm seeing other slowness in Fedora:
--slide bars are not smooth at all-- can't use them, have to click on arrows to go up or down
--Firefox and konqueror are very slow to switch tabs
--moved windows jump and sputter visually
--My cpu monitor sits at 100% for long periods (slowing all actions, such as clicking to change focus to a different window to a crawl)

I'm going to start another thread related to installing nvidia Geforce FX 5200 video drivers as this could be the cause of some of this as well. Or, it's also a possibility that malware is at work. Windows was extremely slow-- couldn't even type anything, several days ago and I had to restore from an image. Nonetheless I'll be back posting to this thread as I do some more investigating and self-edjumukashun.

That would certainly explain why everything is slow. Run top and see what is hogging the cpu. That's a start.

Then decide if you want to kill the process, reconfigure it, or not run it or what. KDE is a hog these days. A cron job can hog cpu usage, some process that did not exit right (Like firefox will peg a cpu)

Look at
http://linuxmanpages.com/man1/top.1.php
http://linuxmanpages.com/man1/kill.1.php
http://linuxmanpages.com/man1/pkill.1.php
http://linuxmanpages.com/man1/xkill.1x.php
http://linuxmanpages.com/man1/ps.1.php

There may be another application or windows mgr that will serve you better.
Instead ok KDE try fluxbox
instead of evolution try sylpheed or thunderbird
Instead of open office try AbiWord


You get the idea.

I'm looking into your suggestion. The processor is supposed to be running at 1.7GHz... shouldn't be at 100% for so long under such little provocation...

Meantime I wanted to throw something out there and see if it sticks-- I accidentally stumbled upon DD-WRT (http://www.dd-wrt.com), an open-source 3rd-party firmware alternative to what Linksys provides with its routers (mine is supported-- Linksys WRT54G2 v1.0 WLAN router). I'm curious that since the router is only listed as Windows and Mac-compatible if it might have something to do with this problem. I suppose I'd better download the original firmware if anything goes wrong but it's worth a shot.
*****If you find this thread and want to attempt flashing your router's firmware, please read the following and then find the specific instructions for your model on the Wiki, otherwise you risk completely mucking up your router. You're going to need to know how to set the router up afterward from square one as settings backups are not applicable to DD-WRT from OEM firmware***** You've been warned.
Read: http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=51486
Then go to http://dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php and find your model

Irrelevant as far as I know. Some routers perform better than others. Better throughput. More or less cache etc.
As long as the router does NAT, your ethernet interface is configed right, you have a namerserver specified, it should not make any difference what the box is.

What does top say is hogging all of the cpu?

It doesn't seem to be anything particular... If I open Firefox or other programs, it hits it hard. I also looked at a GUI monitor and RAM isn't overwhelmed even with multiple programs open. It might be me over-reacting to an adjustment from a 2.6GHz 4xcore to a 1.7GHz single-core. Or, given that the hardware is old, maybe it's getting flaky on me. I'm going to keep reading up, especially on config files before I try to do anything with the router. It's just that this issue is nothing like I've seen before. It doesn't seem like any setting would make an internet connection act like that and the computer in question never had internet connectivity issues under Windows or Fedora 9 or 10.

An odd thing is showing up in Windows-- whenever I'm logged out, I lose my onboard NIC and have to disable and re-enable it. This is after Windows tanked a second time and I restored an image from October. That plus the fact that I've read a lot of complaints about my router are why I wonder if it isn't to blame. But I got a PII 333MHz w/256 MB RAM up on Fedora 8 and the internet connection is fine.

I took my Linksys router (WRT54G2v1.0) out of the equation but still have extremely slow internet connection on Fedora box only.

I also installed a new NIC to try to rule out the onboard NICs of the mobo (ASUS A7N8X-E), but again, still extremely slow.

Next I'm going to check all the config files. Can anyone point me to a good source of info on all network-related config files in Fedora 14? I find bits and pieces but no config guides as of yet.

Thanks.

In the meantime I'm reading O'Reilly's "Running Linux" to get up to speed on everything general. I would definitely recommend it to anyone else wanting to learn Linux basics.

http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/
http://tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/chap_10.html
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/resourc...-tutorial.html
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/
http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200612/200612.htm
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

Did you ever run top to see what was hoging the CPU?

Yes, I ran top and I believe it was simply a bottleneck when trying to run 2 or 3 things at once, having been used to my newer hardware on another computer.

After not finding anything troublesome in config files, I decided to try Fedora 14 KDE and the networking problem is no longer an issue. It must have been something about Fedora 14 Security Spin that was causing the slow internet connection.

I'm going to post a new thread about display issues I saw in Security Spin which are still present in Fedora 14 KDE re: NVIDIA. Meanwhile I'm slowly reading through the material you posted links to as well as "Running Linux." Thanks for your help!