My Network Interface Is Borked!
 

First: I had a stroke a few years ago, and I am a perpetual dumba$$... Sorry...

Well. it is my fault.

I did a reinstall of Debian Stable. And it asked for a firmware blob, which I had downloaded from Debian, that I put on a flash drive. For some reason, it refused to autoconfigure DHCP. I said "ignore it, I will fix it later".

Well, it is later and I have no internet access. He!!, I cannot even connect to my own modem!

So, I have been fighting with this since Saturday night, and I cannot know how to configure my eth0 interface, and yes, it is eth0.

Can anyone offer me a suggestion of what to do?

Please!

Thank you for your help.

{{PS: I have already messed with /etc/network/interfaces, ifdown eth0, ifup eth0, and I do have all of the relevant bits from debian. I just don't know how to use these things to get this eth0 interface working.}}

This manual setup works with any distro, of course, it will not survive reboot.

What kind of install did you do? If you installed one of the desktop environments, it should have also installed networkmanager and a frontend for it that you can use.

First: thank you, Emerson. I am using a live CD (SPIT (Fedora)) and have saved it on a flash drive. I will give it an attempt.

Second: I had tried a netinstall, then I downloaded, and burned, a three dvd disk set. Same thing happened, or didn't happen.... BLAH!!!

I have, as usual, installed XFCE and KDE, and when I get this internet/DHCP nonsense straightened out, I will be adding Fluxbox.

ALSO:

While I get no error in "ifconfig -v eth0 up/down" it still doesn't work.

I will continue working on this...

What hardware are you using? What ethernet devices show up (if any) with the following commands?

Thanks!

I'm just confused because you mention a firmware blob, but my experience is that usually the wired ethernet adapter does NOT require a firmware blob. WiFi is different, and I often get the Debian installer asking for a firmware blob for that. (I never bother with it. I install with wired ethernet and use apt-get afterward if necessary to get wifi working.)

Realtek r8169 driver tries to load firmware when used with 8168 hardware, but works even without blob.

IsaacKuo: I will check on that and tell you later.

Yes, I have a damnable driver, and prior to this reinstall, it HAD worked until Friday's nightmare. (I had initially used (spit) Fedora, but after it crashed and had to reinstall it, I decided that Debian is my best option, and thus started my Saturday night "fun").

It may have worked in the past, but it doesn't work now..... unless my computer guy put a different chip set in my computer "for" me, but it isn't on the work order. I will ask him tomorrow.

IsaacKuo: OK, it may not be a firmware blob, but in the Debian repository it is labelled as a"Binary firmware for Realtek wired and wireless network adapters" and the particular thing had attempted to install is called "rtl_nic/rtl8168g-2.fw".

So, I don't know what it is, but the installer told me that I should install it via a flash drive. It didn't accept it, but I installed it after the system was up and running.

Deleted because I have a better output later

OK, you have public IP address, no NAT router between you and the net. Meaning you cannot set up the IP address by hand, you must use DHCP. Which seems to be working, you got the IP address. What's in /etc/resolv.conf?

Huh. Well, it looks like the required module is present, loaded, and functional. Not only that, but eth0 appears to be up and has an ip address. Unless you manually configured a static IP setup, it must surely have gotten it via DHCP.

But you say you're not able to connect to the internet? My next guess is to look at /etc/resolv.conf to find out what nameserver(s) the OS is attempting to use. The DHCP server might not be configured properly to feed the client a good nameserver to use, or the OS might have something funny going on where an old nameserver is "stuck".

For example, I've had weird things happen where I started a machine off connected to another computer using "Shared to Other computers"; /etc/resolv.conf was populated (correctly) with "nameserver 10.42.0.1". But this setting seemed to get "stuck" so it was still in place even later when I connected up to a different DHCP server.

I manually edited /etc/resolv.conf to the IP address of the currently attached gateway and my problems went away.

If you have no idea what the IP address of your currently attached gateway is, you can guess it from the results of

This will list ip neighbors which have tried to connect to your computer or which your computer has tried to connect to. This will likely be a pretty short list, including the DHCP server (which is likely the gateway you need).

Quick reply to Emerson: I am connected to a router, not directly to the modem. The only thing else is a wireless modem, but WiFi has an inherent upper speed, whereas a wired modem is much faster... I want faster.

I was experimenting with a static, but as of this morning, I switched it back to DHCP.

PS: when I used, I think, "/etc/init.d/dsnmasq restart" it responded with "fail" or "failure"

Also: (spit) Fedora has a connection, as I have installed a small install of (spit) Fedora. However, neither Debian, Ubuntu, nor Mint have an internet connection. It could be an inherent problem with Debian-based kernels, and the last successful kernel compilation was in early 2011, before my stroke. Every attempt at a kernel compilation has resulted in a "kernel panic".

I will get back with that /etc/resolve.conf in about an hour or so.

I'm lost now, if you are behind a router how comes your NIC has public IP address?

As an aside... in 2005, I had been distro-hopping and I chose to stick with Debian in mid 2005. It was, ultimately, either Debian or Slackware.

Should I give Slackware a try, see if I have internet connection, and go from there?
Or maybe I should try Arch.

I have had a stroke in 2011, and I am unable to work, unable to get hired. I use the internet to occupy myself. I play an MMORPG called Ryzom, and I use Steam. Steam is a bit "chunky" on (spit) Fedora. Maybe it is the Debian-based kernels. Perhaps if I try Slackware of Arch it will work.

Just saying....