I just finished my first linux installation (Mandrake 10) and everything works nicely except my damn internet connection. I've googled around but haven't found the answer to my problem so if anyone has any suggestions I'd be very grateful.

I have an ASUS A7V8X-X motherboard with built in LAN (VIA Rhine II). The NIC is detected by Mandrakes "HardDrake" utility when I try to configure it so I select it from the list but when I run konqueror it just says "couldn't connect to 10.0.0.6" (which is my ADSL login host), and I can't ping stuff either.

"ifconfig" returns this:
lo 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:50 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:50 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:3296 (3.2 Kb) TX bytes:3296 (3.2 Kb)

which my newbie-ness says means the card is detected but DHCP seems to not work since i have no real IP.

My LILO config look like this:
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
default="windows"
keytable=/boot/se-latin1.klt
prompt
nowarn
timeout=40
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=off resume=/dev/hda5 splash=silent"
vga=788
read-only

the acpi=off was a suggestion I found on the internet but it doesn't seem to make a difference.

My "modules.conf" is here:
probeall usb-interface usb-uhci ehci-hcd
above snd-via82xx snd-pcm-oss
alias eth0 via-rhine
alias sound-slot-0 snd-via82xx

So it seems to load the VIA-Rhine driver correctly.

My "ifcfg-eth0" is:
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
ONBOOT=no
MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=yes
WIRELESS_ENC_KEY=""
NEEDHOSTNAME=yes

Finaly, at boot i get this:
eth0: VIA VT6102 Rhine-II at 0xa400, 00:0c:6e:92:90:b7, IRQ 5.
eth0: MII PHY found at address 1, status 0x786d advertising 01e1 Link 0020.
eth0: no IPv6 routers present

Which seems ok except for the IRQ 5 thing. In WinXP (I have dual-boot on 2 harddrives) the NIC has IRQ 23 at 0xa400 and works perfectly, and from what little I know NICs generaly wants IRQ 10.

I'm stumped. Any ideas?

Hi ,
your problem might be IPv6 related. (Notice the "eth0: no IPv6 routers present" line in your dmesg output?) When you try to connect the system is trying to contact an IPv6 router, but obviously cant find one, because the world is backward This can cause problems on some distros.
Anyways, to disable IPv6 (probably a good idea for the next few years) do this:
Add the following line to your /etc/modprobe.conf file
alias net-pf-10 off
You may need to comment (i.e. place a # in front of) this line (if it is there):
alias net-pf-10 ipv6

Please try that and post back what the result is.
Good luck,
- drowstar

Thanks for your help, but now i'm *really* lost.

I tried your suggestion and lo and behold, it worked! .... temporarily.... :-(

It worked until I restarted and booted winXP. However internet in winXP *didnt* work. My ipconfig said I had nothing defined as my default gateway. I tried ipconfig /renew but it timed out. I restarted again and booted linux and internet didn't work there either. I restarted again and booted XP and suddenly it worked again....

I cant get it to work in linux again, but it works in XP. I suspect some problem with the DHCP (my ISP can't give me a static IP) but I have no idea what it could be.

When I run "network status" in linux I get:
configured units:
lo eth0
active units:
lo

and even if I do "network start/stop/restart" eth0 wont show up under "active units" again, like it did when I first tried your suggestion.

Finaly: when I boot linux, i get the messages (not verbatim):
starting loopback: OK
starting ethernet interfaces: OK
looking for ethernet connections to start at boot: ..... no such process <some all caps name like EIDCOASD or something>... TIMEOUT ERROR

the last line is weird since I specifically told it *not* to start the connection at startup (I've also tried the opposite but no difference)

All help is welcome.

Hi d_strand,
my first idea after reading your post was that probably the issue was with your provider not your computer, because if both Windows and Linux have problems it's not your configuration. (If you agree with this assessment, your best course of action is probably to wait a while and try it then ).

On eth0 not being an "active unit" try ifconfig up eth0 as root. Usually this should not be necessary. (This will not be a permanent change. Consider that when changing anything. Also, "never touch a running system" applies in this case, since it worked before and if the error is not with your system, a "fix" might prevent it from working later.)
Have you checked if some smartass automatic configuration has overwritten your changes by chance? Not likely but something to be really mad about if not considered.

I hope any of this was of help. If you figure something else out, post back. You do an excellent job of providing information.
- drowstar