Hi guys,

so, I've been using UNIX/Linux for years now, but only as user, I've no admin experience whatsoever. Was lucky enough to have someone else do it for me. Have just bought a new Dell XPS laptop with Vista pre-installed and have installed openSUSE 10.3 as a dual boot system. While I was installing, it wasn't physically connected to the network, so I skipped the network installation. Now I'm trying to get the network running but I really don't even know where to start.

When I run YAST, network settings, I get three entries:

Ethernet network card: not configured
Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network connection: DHCP
Wireless network card: not configured.

TO make things more complicated, my wireless modem, to which it is physically connected atm, is set up to only accept connections from MAC addresses it recognises.

So a couple of questions.

1. is the MAC address the same for the windows and linux boots, or do I need to find out what it is on the linux side? If so, how?

2. Where do I start to configure network cards?

3. Is there a good online intro or book to linux admin?

THanks,

J.

Your on-line Suse documentation should be in /usr/share/doc/manual, both the User and Admin guides. If they're not there, they were not installed by default. All you need to do is go into Yast software installation and select them for installation from cd/dvd. If you're using apt-get, you can install then that way.

For the network card, go into Yast - Network devices - Network card and click on the Administrator button. Enter the root password.

If your card was detected and configured during installation, there should be an entry in the lower half of the right-hand panel. Click on the Change button to see the configuration settings, especially the driver information.

In a terminal window, run '/usr/sbin/hwinfo --netcard' to get information about the card, including the driver it requires, and whether or not the driver is active. If it is not, su to root and run 'modprobe <drivername>' (substituting in the driver name without the file extension (usually .ko)). Then go back to Yast and verify the correct driver is used.

If there is no entry for a network card, click on Configure to go into the configuration module to set it up.

Hey BigRig,

thnx for that. Have checked hwinfo, did modprobe for both devices and both now are active, but inactive before. Still no network action. Am I missing something?

J.

What do you mean by active That you saw it in the hardware information if
so you have still to configure it yast2 network devices
Mostly if you put IP adress is dynamic and PPP over ethernet it works
assuming that you,re dsl is connected tot the ethernet card



best off luck