Sorry if this sounds like a dumbo question.

I've installed SuSE on the PC and attached it to router. When it starts up, it doesn't pick up its IP address, because I don't see an entry in the router's LAN address table.

On the router, I've set the LAN domain name to "home.com".

On the linux box itself, as root, I went into YaST->Network Services->DNS and Hostname. There, I specified the configuration

Hostname : HP7510
Domain : home.com (same as the router)

I noticed on this page that the Name Servers and Domain Search List are set to my ISP's DNS servers' IP addresses, and not to the router's. Is this correct?

I then went into YaST->Network Services->Hostnames, and noticed that the configuration was:

loopback : 127.0.01
HP7510.home.com : 127.0.0.2

Finally, when I went to YaST->Network Devices->Network Card, the card's configuration is:

IP address assigned using DHCP
Started automatically at boot

The question is, why doesn't the box use DHCP to pick up an address from the router? I know the router is OK, since it works perfectly with the Windows box attached to it.

Hoping for help...
Paul

Have you tried to configure the card in YaST? Are you sure it is configured?
Also, try setting the DNS info to get it from DHCP (since you said the router is set to home.com)

Post the output of:

ifconfig

Lastly are you sure you haven't hardcoded the access via the router with MAC's?

Hello Eclipse and thanks for the reply,

No I didn't configure the card using YaST. Should I have? I thought that that was the point of using DHCP on the router.

What do you mean by "Also, try setting the DNS info to get it from DHCP (since you said the router is set to home.com)"?

The output from ifconfig is even stranger, since it indicates that the card's address has been configured:

HP7510:~ # ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:17:31:46:8D:CA
inet addr:192.168.0.178 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::217:31ff:fe46:8dca/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:5133 errors:8 dropped:22 overruns:3 frame:0
TX packets:4940 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:4319823 (4.1 Mb) TX bytes:916958 (895.4 Kb)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0xa000

This time, when I examine the router, I noticed that it has indeed assigned the address 192.168.0.178 to the hostname HP7510. When I ping HP7510, it pings itself:

HP7510:~ # ping HP7510
PING HP7510.home.be (127.0.0.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
4 bytes from HP7510.home.be (127.0.0.2): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.082 ms

Why at the address 127.0.0.2, and not 192.168.0.178?

However, when I ping HP7510.host.com:

HP7510:~ # ping HP7510.host.com
PING HP7510.host.be.home.com (83.143.18.124) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from ns.openhost.com (83.143.18.124): icmp_seq=1 ttl=44 time=450 ms

This time it pings a completely different address. Very stange. I'm sure that it's a configuration problem somewhere? Any ideas?

Thanks,
Paul

Open YaST
Go to Network Services
Click DNS and Hostnames
(If a popup appears press Modify)
Check the 2 checkboxes that read:
Change Hostname via DHCP
Update Name Servers and Search Lists via DHCP

Accept and just check to see if this works..

If it does, then you can go back and unchange the "Change Hostname via DHCP" but keep the second checked.

Eclipse.

I tried that, and got this:

P7510:~ # ping HP7510
PING HP7510.home.com (127.0.0.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from HP7510.home.com (127.0.0.2): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.072 ms

HP7510:~ # ping HP7510.home.com
PING HP7510.home.com (127.0.0.2) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from HP7510.home.com (127.0.0.2): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.073 ms

Ah! It noew resolves HP7510 and HP7510.hom.com to the same domain. But why does it resolve it to 127.0.0.2, instead of the address 192.168.0.178 reported by ifconfig?

I checked /etc/resolv.conf:

search home.com
nameserver 195.130.130.132
nameserver 195.130.129.164

It seems that the local DNS client doesn't doesn't know how to access HP7510.home.com which it should retrieve from the router, and instead assigned the address 127.0.02 to it.

Finally, when I try to resolve the hostname, I get sometyhing different:

HP7510:~ # host HP7510
HP7510.home.com has address 83.143.18.124
HP7510.home.com has IPv6 address 3ffe:4013:2105:1::124

HP7510:~ # host HP7510.home.com
HP7510.home.com has address 83.143.18.124
HP7510.home.com has IPv6 address 3ffe:4013:2105:1::124

As a final check, across on my windows box, when I ping HP7510.home.com, it also resolves to 83.143.18.124.

Even more confused.

Thanks again,
Paul