Learned my lesson, I am re-installing Slack, 2 questions please
 

Hello Everyone

To all those who gave me assistance during my recent failed attempt to get the network running on the old P4 laptop, I thank you again. After turning to both Fedora and Ubuntu thinking that was going to solve it, I learned that Slack is still king and I should have persevered and solved the networking problem and kept Slackware installed in the first place.

Well, I am now reinstalling Slack, and before I do, I would just like to ask two questions.

1. I cannot get X running with the drivers that the kernel inserts after the install. Is there a way I can go ahead and specify the "vesa" driver be used during the install to save time?

2. Is there some way to check my network connections during the install to try and prevent the DHCP issues I had the first time? If you will recall, I got a connection to the network, but no IP address was offered.

I appreciate any help

Bob

Hi,

Try using search feature,:) there's ample information spread here about both your questions.

Good Luck!

Thank you for your post. Yes, I am sure I could have found it when I did search the first time somewhere in the 100 + posts about compiz, just thought I might get a quick tip

Bob

1) There is an example xorg.conf-vesa in /etc/X11 you may need to edit a abit though.

2) You are installing over the network? Or just want to setup networking?

Didier made a post a few weeks back with some valuable insights into how the framebuffer/modesetting now works. You may find it useful.

Well, thanks again, guys, but same story on this install. Got everything working but networking. I will tell you, this has been the toughest problem I have ever incurred in Linux and it appears that it is a tough for everyone because I have posted this issue on three different forums and consulted a Linux pro here in town. No one seems to have heard of this before and no one has been able to direct my investigation.

I set up /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 exactly the same as on another working setup I have, as well as wpa_supplicant, and I continue to get exactly the same results. The odd thing to me is that it effects wired connections as well. The only clues I have are from dmesg:

and further down:

It appears to be DHCP related but I just can't figure it out. Especially why it works for one machine and not the other.

I continue to get this:

It continues that for about ten lines and then times out.

Iwlist scan finds my network.

So, I have now re-installed three times, configured three times, same result. I would think this was an impossible taks except that other distros have no problem with the network interfaces, they just could not handle this graphics chip. Slack is the only one that will handle that with the vesa driver. But no networking.

Does anyone have any ideas where I could look?

Bob

I had a customer today and their router would associate, but not hand out an IP address. I just set a static IP and away I went.............sort of. The router proved to be bad. Linksys routers do this A LOT. Also there is ndiswrapper which may or may not help, I've been on both sides of that fence.

And why are you getting output about IPv6?

The router is brand new, and there are four other computers that network from it just fine. I wondered about the IPv6 output as well, but it has not been an issue on the other machines. I have found only one piece of information on the net about this issue and there was no resolve there either. If I had only one machine using the network, then I would try a static address. I did try it once by resetting the router temporarily and got the same result. The router is not a Linksys, it is a Zyxel which apparently have a good reputation.

Bob

I have one customer that has a Zytex so I can't speak as to it's reputation, but I wish that customer would throw it in the trash. You should be able to associate a MAC to an IP in the router so that the router always give the same IP to that machine. Set it static in the laptop. My network has all static with the router set to DHCP. This allows for static routing in the full time members of the network, while visitors phones and laptops are allowed to draw IP addresses. Setting infinite leases is another option if the router allows that.

yes, that was my next experiment. I am going to assign the laptop an address in the client list on the router and see if that makes any difference. I have alreadd tried setting a static address on the laptop to no avail, same results. I can see that it authenticates just fine, associates, and then disassociates and unauthenticates for some unknown reason. But this is the only machine I have that does this. As I mention, wired connection prodouces the same results, so it is an overall networking problem. It did occur to me that I have two laptops with similar names: bob-laptop and bob-laptop1 with of course difference wireless chips and different mac addresses, so I doubt that has any effect.

Bob

Hello, dive

Just trying to get networking setup. I will tackle other things later as I have a usable system now.

Hello GazL

That looks like it might be of great help. Just need to get networking going before I try to tackle the graphics.

Did you install wicd or are you just using what comes with the stock slackware?

Hi,

I have a Zyxel 630 and believe the Modem/router setup pool is 192.168.x.1-34 for wired and DHCP pool starts at 35. Of course this is all configurable.

I would setup a static IP for the wired first to confirm your install. Then test a wireless static IP. Do you have another wireless card for the laptop to make sure it's not the built in chipset?

I would disable the IPV6 by adding this to the '/etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf';

This will disable the automatic loading of ipv6, while also allowing you to load it manually later, if need be.

:hattip:

I am now using what comes stock with Slackware. On the previous install I did try wicd, but got no where with it.

Hello Onebuck,

I will try that as well. I did find one odd thing this morning. When I went into the router setup and checked the client list it is listing my other laptops hostname as the name of the SSID. which is "Sprocket" (my dogs name). My laptop's hostname is "bob-laptop" and the hostname of the troublesome laptop is "bob-laptop1". I do not know why the client list on the router would be listing its own name.

Thanks for the help

Bob

BTW: The network card is fine. It is the RT2500 chipset which as been natively supported since 2.6.23 (or before). The module it uses is the RT2500pci. It used to use the older RT2500 module but it would not work with WPA encryption. The new module does. I have used this card this four other distrobutions and Windows successfully. I don't believe it is the card.

Well, maybe another clue. The client list in the router setup is listing "bob-laptop1" with its HWaddr and a hostname of "Sprocket". It also shows "bob-laptop" with its HWaddr and a hosthane of "Sprocket".

Bob

Not being a networking expert I don't have clue what most of this means, but I run:

It produces line after line of fast moving text, but some of the pertinent ones look like this:

It repeats this many times until I press Control-c to stop it. Also, I tried changing the name of the DHCPHOSTNAME to the laptop hostname and it made no difference.

Does anyone know what this output means?

Bob

Well, maybe another clue. After making the DHCP hostname change and rebooting, I checked the client list in the router and the laptop is list with an IP address of 192.168.1.37! But Slack dropped the IP address and assigned the failed address of 169.254.181.78. What in the world could be going on?

Bob

Tried another wireless card that used the zd1211 module. Loaded the module fine, but same result as the other card, so it is not a driver issue.

Bob

iwconfig on the working machine and the failed machine are the same except as follows:

working machine:

The machine I cannot connect with:

This might also be a clue.

I apologize for replying to my own posts but it is an effort provide as much information as I can to an expert who may recognize what the problem is.

Bob

:(A couple of years ago I had a brand new router that took me six months to realise it was faulty... changed to an old spare one ... problem solved. !:D:D:D

Thank, I had considered that. But it works with every other distro and is currently working fine with four other machines. Not the router. I think I have narrowed it down to this problem:

But, I have no idea how to fix it or whether I ever will be able to.

Thanks for the reply.

Bob

Hardware resetting
 

What about resetting the hardware to factory defaults... ! sorry if my guessing is useless ! but sometimes the simplest ideas are the best.

...and does your lappy connect with no encryption, sans wpa...?

I've been following your threads and have always had a niggling suspicion about wpa_supplicant and its ilk (what kept me from responding were a)the issue occurs with *wired* connections, as well and b)i figured a wireless guru might have chimed in.) However, I seem to recall past issues specifically with wpa (though none have ever affected me, and I can't point you to any thread in particular....)

cheers,

Thank you for your help. I did that already. No dice.

Bob

Thanks for your reply. I have tried disabling the security on the router and I get the same errors. I have found dozens of forum posts about this issue on the net now that I have dug deep. It's amazing to me that not ONE of these posts had ever had a solution. I don't recall a linux issue that was unresolvable, and I suspect that there is an answer to this one as well, but whether I will ever find it I am beginning to doubt. However, the point is close to being moot. I was trying to revive this laptop for my wife and finally get her to "trust" Linux. Windows will not run on it in any usuable way, no other Linux distrobution will handle the graphics, so if I cannot get this fixed, the laptop will go on the trash heap. Pity, though, I think there would have been a few years of life left in it.

I may try to download the -current .iso and install that. If that fails, it's the trash heap.

Bob

noooooooooooooo!!

seriously, I'll be in the UK in early June, and I could use it...(one of my projects is reviving old stuff and giving it away, spreading the linux *love* virus; just starting a program with a local first nations group...)

cheers,

Yes, that is a little extreme. It does still work with live cd's (with a network connection, I might add).

You are probably right about wpa_supplicant. When I run it, it associates, connects and then just hangs, no further output at all.

Bob

That's normal. Now open a second terminal and do 'dhcpcd wlan0' or whichever interface you are using.

Thanks

same result

Just tried with a Puppy live cd. Getting the same errors now with Puppy. Now I must look elsewhere.

Sheeesh!

Bob

Hi,

You did disable ipv6?

What about the Ethernet (wired) static IP setup? Did it work?
A sample static IP configuration;
You should have your '/etc/resolv.conf' setup with your 'ISP DNS' nameservers. If the static IP works for Ethernet then move to setup the wireless network device. If that doesn't work then reboot or restart the inet.

Then show us the output;

For the last command take the 'device address' from the output of the 'lspci -vv |grep -i network'.

Which driver is shown for Network(wireless) & Ethernet device for the 'lspci' output?

Thanks onebuck,

The wired connection gives me the same output, it doesn't connect either. I don't know why this will not work with Slackware (and now Puppy as well) when it has worked with Windows and others distros.

I don't believe this one can be fixed.

Bob


EDIT: Your instructions for setting up the manual WIRED configuration WORKED! I was able to ping the other machines and the router, but could not get a net connection (DNS). The /etc/resolv.conf was empty so I copied the information from a working machine. Still could not reach the net. BUT, at least I know the router works, It is something in DHCP and wpa_supplicant, I am convinced.

Sorry, onebuck. It took me a while to copy all of it over.

ifconfig -a:

route -n:

cat /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf

lsmod:

lspci -vv | grep network:

lspci -vv |grep -i Ethernet

Hope that can get clarity on it. Thank you very much for looking at this.

Bob

Can you ping the ip that is in /etc/resolv.conf? If not then the default gateway is probably not setup. run: netstat -rn. You should see a line like:

0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

Which means that all ip address that don't match any other route get sent to 192.168.1.1 (this should be the ip of your router). If you don't see a line like this then you don't have a default gatweway and that's why you can't reach your ISp's dns servers.

Thank you for your post, but the gateway is active and recognized. Just and cannot get an IP address.

Bob

I also had a problem with DHCP not playing nice with my router.
Run 'dhclient' from a prompt and see if you get an IP address.

I have tried that as well. It simply times out. To tell you the truth, I am losing the will to go on with this. The purpose of the whole things was to install a stable system for my to use Linux. She was not willing to learn it in the past, but said if I could set this laptop up, she would give it a try. That has been blown out of the water. I don't think I will be able to convince her anytime soon that Linux is "easy" now.

Thank you for you post.

Bob

keng, I have been going crazy with this for a week now. I tried dhclient at least a dozen times before. Just for the heck of it I tried it again just now and it WORKED!!! I got an IP address for this machine for the first time.

I will just have to see if it is a freak success and won't withstand a reboot, but it has worked for the first time, so that is proof that it will work.

Thank you very much for taking the time to post. And if this fixes it, thank you to each and every one who posted trying to help. I have learned a lot from this and I hope I can share that with someone else who may have the same issue.

For anyone else dealing with this issue regarding dhcpcd and the "option 43" error, there is additional very good information in this thread:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...173/page2.html

Bob

Just disconnected and reconnected using dhclient. Worked for the second time, so I am marking this thread SOLVED. I really am going to endeavor to find out why dhcpcd would not work when it does with one other laptop running Slack current. But for now I am thrilled to see the end of this one.

Thanks again to everyone, particularly keng.

Bob

Hi,

When you set this did you place the nameservers from your ISP in '/etc/resolv.conf'?

You will set the DNS up. I sometimes test with a third level DNS;

Plus be sure to setup the default route for the eth0 device;
Notice the gateway for my sample output.

Yes, thank you onebuck. I followed your directions and the results are as you described. It appears as the dhcpcd was the cultprit after all. I am still going to see if I can figure why dhclient works and dhcpcd doesn't

All the best

Bob

Hi,

I would be sure to disable ipv6 as shown. Once you confirm the wired Ethernet works statically you can then proceed to setup the wireless network device. I would setup the wireless device in the same as the Ethernet;

I would setup a static IP first, do as root from cli;

Don't forget the '/etc/resolv.conf' setup. Once you confirm that the static is working then you can either setup via the '/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf' or use wicd. I sometimes just use a script when I want to change;

Once you have the static working then proceed to setup encryption.

BTW, I would be changing my key if the post you posted above is the current key. You don't need to post keys for us to aid in diagnosis.

:hattip:

Thanks, onebuck. That was not my actual key. It is stored in wpa_supplicant, which I did not post. I tried your method and it does infact get me connected with an IP address. I still could not get online even though I had correctly configured /etc/resolv.conf. However, if I disconnect with wicd and receconnect with wicd, I am assigned the same IP address, and I am online.

I will continue to investigate these issues, but for now I can connect and that was the biggest issue.


Thank you for your help.

Bob