[Solved] ethernet connection established, but no internet via firefox
 

Hi,

I putzed around with the network wizard in SimplyMepis, and now even though icons on the taskbar indicate that eth0 is connected, and I can see that several kb are being sent and received, I am unable to bring up any pages using firefox. I am able to boot from the live-evaluation/installation CD and surf the internet. I was wondering if the problem would be fixed by copying/overwriting a simple configuration file from the CD to the setup already installed on hard drive. If so, which file is it?

Thanks for your assistance.

First to see if the internet is working run both these commands to see if all is working.
ping -c2 www.google.com
ping -c2 64.233.167.104

Brian

If I ping www.google.com, I get

unknown host

If I ping 64.233.167.104 I get

56(84) bytes of data
ping: sendmsg: operation not permitted
statistics
2 packets transmitted, 0 received

I carried these out as root

When booting, I see messages to the extent of

dropped packets, eth0 In=Out=(192..... IP address) repeated many times

ifconfig -a gives (first few lines)

eth0 Link encap: Ethernet HWaddr: 00:04:76:4F:36:CE
inet addr: 192.168.1.102 Bcast: 192.168.1.255 Mask: 255.255.255.0

lo Link encap: Local loopback
inet addr: 127.0.0.1 Mask: 255.0.0.0

There's no place like 127.0.0.1, a paraphrase of 'there's no place like home'.
All of the URLs listed refer to your machine (home); nothing refering to the outside world.

In my Debian install, my ethernet card is eth0.
in my Suse install, eth0.
in my PCLinuxOS, eth1.
Go figure. Same card. Same machine. Only one card.

So, the question I have for you is, does SimplyMepis include the hwinfo utility? If it does, run 'hownfo --netcard'. What's the output?

You could also try setting up your network (internet) connection on eth1 to see what happens when you run ifconfig -a.

Thanks for your help.

I decided to simply reinstall from the live-CD. SimplyMepis is nice in that it asks you if you want to keep your existing /home. I'll let you know if I can connect afterward. I expect to be able to, as booting from the live-evaluation CD allows me to surf the net.

Yep, problem solved by reinstallation while maintaining home. Easy enough to synaptic back to up-to-date state. Thanks for your help.

Offhand, it sounds like this is an issue with what's called DHCP. Let me toss out a little bit of background information here...

Once any computer activates its Ethernet connection, it needs to find out some things about the local network to which it is connected ... such as, "how do I reach the outside world?" Or, "if I want to find the Internet address corresponding to 'www.google.com', whom do I ask?"

The way that this happens is as follows: the computer sends a broadcast message asking for a reply from "anyone who knows how to help me." That "anyone" will be "a DHCP server," which most likely will be your local router or perhaps your cable-modem.

All of this rather-magical stuff should have been well taken care of by your distro. But if you encounter a puzzling situation like this one, "think DHCP." At least in the back of your mind.

I think you mean DNS. It seems to me that ehawk had a corrupted resolv.conf file, which handles name resolution. In my experience this can occur when network manager (or whatever your distro calls it)is enabled. That's why the name www.google.com could not be resolved, or converted to an IP address.

I think it's a DHCP problem too. It is true that the domain can't be resolved, but it is more important that an arbitrary ipaddress can't be pinged. From this you can conclude that the computer doesn't know which route it has to take, thus it has no gateway through which it has to send the information. But because it does have a broadcast address the gateway address was probably not properly setup.

The inability to resolve is just a result of no connection at all.

It's worth noting in the Dapper Drake dist of Ubuntu, those who connect with a DSL connection often have to run pppoe-config to get their connections working.

1. SimplyMEPIS 3.3.2 does have hwinfo -- nice command, thanks for bringing it to my attention.

2. Having to run pppoe-config to get a DSL connection w/ Dapper, Ubuntu, or any other distro has nothing to do w/ the distro used; & everything to do w/ one's ISP. <gloat>Mine uses DHCP, & gives each customer 3 (three) "sticky" IP addresses. :cool: :D</gloat>

i am having same problems :( with VL 5.8 firefox has no internet BUT konqueror can.

here is the details of my network: