Have you got another system you can connect, and get to the router settings?

Sorry for the delay

Yes i can see the router's settings from the system that im currently sending this message.

This is the status output :

Device Information
Model Name FBR-1461A ADSL2+ Modem Router
Host Name home.gateway
System Up-Time 2 day(s), 5 hour(s) 09 min(s)
Current Time Mon Aug 6 14:33:52 2007
Hardware Version TRENDCHIP TC3162
Software Version 1.35-RC24-180-80.3_sso_levelone
Bootrom Version 1.06
MAC Address 00:11:6b:52:9b:88
Home URL LevelOne
LAN
IP Address 192.168.1.254
SubNetmask 255.255.255.0
DHCP Server DHCP Server Running

Another part indicating ethernet and lan options has this output :

Primary IP Address
IP Address 192.168.1.254
SubnetNetmask 255.255.255.0
RIP Disable

Do you think that Routing Information Protocol in addition with sth else causes all this trouble ?

The options are RIP v1,v2,v1+v2,v2 multicast ..




Any ideas ?

In an earlier post you said you did ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.254 up
auxsvr pointed out in post #10 that that set your PC to have the same IP as your router. So when you tried pinging 192.168.1.254, you weren't pinging your router, you were pinging yourself. No wonder it "worked".

Your dhcp server is running on your router. That's good. It is unlikely that you have told your dhcp server only to offer leases to particular MACs as you would remember having done this. But you could chek its config pages just in case.

So, first bring down whatever is(n't) happening on eth0 :
sudo ifdown eth0
Then try and contact your dhcp server
sudo dhclient eth0
If no result, maybe a socket on your router is bad: try plugging your PC into a different socket on your router, and trying again.

If no result, have you got a spare NIC card you could try instead of the eth0 you are using?

When I mentioned crossover cables, the situation I was envisaging was this (you say "the cables are OK")
-You have a cable connected to a machine, and it is working.
-It happens to be a crossover cable, but the machine that it was working on detected this, and managed to compensate for it (Only some NICs will do this, but you were in luck with that machine's hardware).
-You plug this "working" cable into your linux PC. It is still a crossover cable though. And the NIC in your linux PC is perhaps of a model that cannot compensate for a crossover cable. So the "working" cable doesn't work. Cables are cheap. Beg, Borrow, or buy a straight-through ethernet cable, and try it.

Everyone: thank you for your replies and time.

When i said that my cables are ok i didn't explain what i did. My mistake. I tried with 3 different straight through cables, *just to be sure* ;0p

You are correct. I would remember having done sth like that.

Already done

I dont think that there's a hardware problem.

I read in a post in slackwarehelp i think, that a driver (linuxant) blocked the user's attempts to log.
I tried stoping modules but im not sure i followed the correct path. Do you think that ipv6 might be the cause for all this ? Tried stoping it with modprobe -r ipv6 but it is in use. Bringing down the ethernet and lo, havent shown any light.



*Sigh*

No I don't think RIP has anything to do with the problem. RIP is a protocol routers can use to update routing tables, so routers in a network know where to forward packets to, so a destination can be reached.

No again, it can cause problems, in my experience mostly timeouts. IPv4 and IPv6 can co-exist, and do on many systems. It won't hurt to remove it, if you are not using it. I disabled it on my system, it was causing timeouts, and long delays loading web pages. The day will come when we can no longer live without it, but we are not there yet.

As I understand the problem, the hardware from your point of view is O.K. Your system does not get an IP address from your router, other systems are O.K. that are connected to the same router.

You swapped router ports, and the port in use is know to be working.

I would suggest one of two things. If the hardware is really working, you should be able to take a live CD, like Knoppix, or PCLinux and boot your system from the CD drive, and verify that works. I would expect either to work with very little effort. If either works, no dought the hardware is good.

The other thing would be to try and trace the activity on eth0. I would try Nmap for that. We need to know if your system is sending a DHCP request, and if it ever sees a response. I worked in networking for years, and traces were a life saver more than once. They don't always fix problems, but they always are direction pointers and show what works and what doesn't.

I think Knoppix has Nmap as part of the CD. You may be able to install it from your installation media, on your existing system. Have a look for that.

Hope this helps.

Ok guys i found the darn solution.
The router was aware of the existence of a network adapter but there was no talking. So i guessed that my nic was just rude ;0p

The problem was in the Network adapter module.

All i had to do was unload the tulip module and load dmfe.

modprobe -r tulip

modprobe dmfe

Thank you all for your time and patience :0))

Glad you found the fix...