More and more distros don't like the internet
 

I'm still on my newbie quest to find the perfect distro for me, but many of the distributions I've tried out have had the same strange problem connecting to other computers on our network or on the internet. In all of the distros that have had the problem, I can successfully ping the IP address that my router gives me through DHCP (either 192.168.1.100 or .101, depending on if our other computer logged in before mine or not). However, attempting to ping the router (192.168.1.1) does not work, nor does pinging our other computer or any address on the internet. I've tried manually setting up the IP address, mask, gateway and DNS addresses, and I've also tried just letting it try to automatically figure everything out. Neither has worked. It seems like newer versions have bigger problems with this too. A year or two ago when I first tried Slax, it booted and had me on the internet without me having to do a thing. The last two Slax releases have displayed the problem above. Any idea what's up and how to fix it?

Sounds like you've got a problem with your router setup - IMHO it should have the dns definitions in it.
I am constantly changing/testing distros.

Never have a problem.

cat /etc/resolv.conf
hostname
route
iptables -L
nmap 192.168.0.1
cat /etc/nsswitch.conf
ifconfig
dhclient eth0

are commands that should be useful.

@syg00: If it's a router problem, why would Windows and other distros be able to connect just fine (and other computers on the network as well)? I tried those commands, RobertP and got these responses (using MEPIS 3.4-3):

Why don't we all just pretend I was never in this thread.
Should know better than to shoot from the lip - especially where networking is concerned.
I'll shuddup now ...

The only thing I see that is unusual is a large number of errors from ifconfig for eth0. Try restarting networking and

mii-tool eth0

Do you get a link light on the NIC?

And the link light is on.

Just curious what is the make/model of the NIC?

I think there is nothing wrong with the Linux box. Can you surf to the router and check its configuration? Can you surf to the internet? It could be the the router is set to ignore/block pings. That could be a security feature. It would be very annoying if it blocked port 80.

Try also flushing the firewall rules:
iptables -F
iptables -L

I do not understand why you have an IP address if dhclient does not get an answer. Try /etc/init.d/network stop
/etc/init.d/network start
to bring the network up in the usual manner.

In the distros that have the problem, I can't do anything on the internet - surf or ping. In some distros and in Windows pinging and surfing both work fine (to any computer on the internet or to the router). In the problem distros the only addresses I can successfully ping are 127.0.0.1 and whatever address the router gives me through DHCP. After flushing the firewall rules, I tried pinging and got a response to the effect of 'sendto not being an allowed command' on any IP address I tried to ping (even if it was one of the two that worked before). (Sorry I forgot to copy the exact error message, but if you need a more detailed error message I can check it again.) Anyway, after that I tried stopping/starting the network and got the following response:

Looking at the changelog for SLAX, suggests to me they are in rapid development and perhaps have a bug in the init scripts. You could try the manual settings ( see http://slax.linux-live.org/doc_using...ax.php#network ). You need to find the IP address for the name server and plug that in plus an appropriate IPaddress for you NIC not already in use.

Once you find a configuration that works, plug it into the init scripts instead of what came with SLAX.

This was on MEPIS 3.4-3. :)

That is so old! They are now onto 6... and using Ubuntu for a base. Why not upgrade?

What's up? If I had to guess, I'd say it's something in the way the kernel handles the APIC/PCI bus/ACPI/NIC/???? that causes the network module (driver) to not work right. This could be specific to the paramaters used in building the kernels, which would explain why some distros have problems and others don't, even with the same kernel version. This could also be the fault of the motherboard and it's a fix that is worked around (possibly unknowingly) in some distros.

How to fix it? I wish I had a solid answer. I've seen this where the NIC just refuses to work, sometimes it's specific to certain distros. In the past I could always swap out the PoS NIC for a 3Com and everything would work. These days everyone has LAN on Motherboard kits so swapping out the network card for a decent one isn't the same. On some systems I've fixed it by tweaking BIOS settings (like PnP OS) but on others it makes no difference.

You appear not to understand the Mepis release philosophy.
The beta using the Canonical base is still just that - a beta.