I'm having issues with my cable connection. It seems that when I turn on the computer, or reboot it, it hangs when detecting "eth0".
If in verbose mode, it shows "failed".
When I get into my desktop, I have to right click on that network icon near the clock, and go and click on "connect to eth0".
After a couple/few seconds, it connects.

It sure is annoying, being I don't see why it keeps failing, when I can connect it within a few seconds.

Are you turning on your modem/router at the same time as you are turning on your computer? If so, maybe the computer boots faster than the modem can, so it hasn't had time to establish a connection and "Fails".
Otherwise you'll probably see some useful information about what failed and why in /var/log/messages

HTH

That stuff is always on. I have no problems with it using windows XP, mandrakelinux 10.1 and suse 10.0

If I don't manually connect, it just never will.

I'll try typing that in sometime, currently on suse, but will check through mandiva soon

I typed in that command, but all it says is permission denied. Even tried in root and shutdown (maintenance) mode.
Same thing: Permission denied

/var/log/messages is not a command, it is a text file. Look at it by opening a terminal, becoming root and typing:
tail -1000 /var/log/messages
There may be some information about why your connection is failing.

Your modem probably has a DHCP server running. You could try the following (as root):
ifdown eth0
dhclient eth0
If that gets you connected then put those lines at the end of the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local and you should be connected at boot time.

HTH

It seems like it does what you say it will, but when I reboot, it hangs again and it's disconnected when I get on the desktop.

more detailed:

[root@localhost jeremy]# ifdown eth0
[root@localhost jeremy]# dhclient eth0
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.3
Copyright 2004-2005 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/products/DHCP

eth1: unknown hardware address type 24
eth1: unknown hardware address type 24
Listening on LPF/eth0/00:11:2f:d4:51:8f
Sending on LPF/eth0/00:11:2f:d4:51:8f
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK from 192.168.1.1
bound to 192.168.1.108 -- renewal in 41086 seconds.
[root@localhost jeremy]#


I am going through what you do call "DHCP". When I get on the desktop, I'm disconnected.
When I type in the dhclient eth0, I get connected.
As soon as I reboot, it hangs again, and apon arrival on the desktop, not connected.

OK, we'll start at the beginning again. Let's go s-l-o-w-l-y.....

1] Your modem is on all the time & is connected to the net.
2] Your computer does not make the connection at boot time.
3] You are able to connect manually with the dhclient eth0 command.
4] This connection does not survive a reboot.

You could find out why your computer does not make the connection at boot time, by examining the output of tail -1000 /var/log/messages, but it seems you haven't done this. If you don't find out why the connection is failing, you can't fix it, but you could ignore it......

You can ignore the failure to connect at boot time, and always connect manually. This might get tedious though.

As I said yesterday, if dhclient eth0 gets you connected, then you should put ifdown eth0
dhclient eth0 as the last two lines in the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local. The contents of this file are executed after your machine has finished booting, but before the desktop comes up. So you'll be connected automatically.

I'm so sorry. I read that as -tall not -tail. I came up with a ton of info.

Also, I thought when you talked about that being the last two lines, I still thought typing in terminal.
This morning, it hit me. You edit that rc.local or whatever, and place those two in the bottom.
Well, due to that, there's partial success.
It fails detecting the IP address, but as soon as I'm on the desktop, I am connected.

The only issue now, is that long hang up. I can go upstairs, start the car, maybe another thing, and that darn thing is still at boot.

Final update (I hope anyway)

My onboard LAN card failed. I mean failed. I wasn't even able to connect manually. I went over to SuseLinux 10.0, which had no problems before, but it turned out, I wasn't able to go online there either.
I went on Windows XP, no internet. So that's when I figured my onboard LAN card died.

I popped out a LAN card from another PC, popped it in, it works through windows again as usual.

Also, there was no hang up during the boot sequence in Mandriva, PLUS, it was connected right away!

Ah Ha! - Hardware problems!
Glad you were able to fix it.

I want to thank you all for helping me on this problem. I believe I still need that one "dhclient eth1" in that file, so helping me wasn't a total waste of time.
I'm almost certain I do, because mandrakelinux and suselinux worked well, and mandriva didn't.
So, thanks again! I've been shutting it off, rebooting, even reinstalled it to test, and it works!
Many thanks!