How could I possibly learn Linux & Debian when no accurate help is given
 

I must say I'm very disapointed. I' a newbie, and have recently installed the Debian 3.1 Sarge, and have several problems and have therefore tried to get some answers on them one by one to finally be able to stop using Windows. But how could I... when no help is around. I tried more than this forum and the lack of accurate help are about the same. I have bought serveral books about Linux and even the Debian 3.0 Bible, but find much to wish for.

So please.... if there is answers to my question below... I would really appreciate an answer to the problem.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=352760

TIA

The title ".....no accurate help is given...." is not appropriate here.
If you read that thread - you were given accurate help - for free - in 24 hours even!!!

You use DHCP. Your IP, gateway, everything will disappear when you obtain a DHCP lease.
If you don't know (you might not) - DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. This is the technology used to assign IP addresses when a machine comes up on boot. It will configure (or in your case - reconfigure) all the necessary files so that to config is complete. Your entry is deleted.

If you want to keep your gateway, and IP info persistent at reboot, you must disable DHCP.

I am sure that you have done this because you have to do this in order to edit the file but just a stupid thought. I have never had any problem with my interfaces file losing the info that I have set. So my question to you is what editor are you using just wondering. Vi or Vim?? but when you are adding the line to the interfaces file you are stopping the insert and writting it to memory are you not. I know that this is probably no help to you but I was just wondering because no one asked and when I first started with linux I would have messed this up. So just a thought sorry if it is of no help.

Hi, and thanks for your effort to help here. If I should summarize it, it will be like below:

Have recently installed the Debian 3.1 Sarge (multiuser workstation install) and I can access a webserver of my own here at my local LAN, but I can't access the Internet, if I don't do this in before:

1) Remove a default setup, 'route del default eth0'
2) Adding, 'route add default gw 192.168.7.5 eth0', which address belongs to my Freesco Linux router.
3) Remove of the domain name to my local old Debian 3.0 Samba server (192.168.7.1) which also handles the DHCP addresses to all Windows and Linux workstations within the local LAN. I use the graphical networking tool for this in GNOME. I'm logged in as root user in a terminal window doing these route commands.

After a few minutes, every setup done above are removed in the route table, and the domain name is back also, and I have to do all again to be able to surf. What is overwriting my changes.

To my knowledge, there is no rule that says that a DHCP server and the gateway/router need to be the same computer. Please, correct me if I'm wrong here.

I find it strange to be forced to use static IPs as PenguinPwrdBox says above, to able to get it to work, because I run my Windows workstations this way and they use DHCP as well. I thought Linux would be more configurable than Windows, and therefore this would be a piece of cake. About being given accurate help or not, my meaning is not to be rude or to offend anyone, but it's kind of frustrating not being able to getting any further. If you like to give me some hint or two on what step I need to take to be learning more about Linux and specially about Debian, it would be grate.

TIA

Hmm...
If I understood everything correctly, then you are using DHCP. DHCP will periodically (typically every time the lease is renewed) overwrite all your network settings. Hence you have to do them again every now and then.

This, of course, is very undesirable and not at all necessary. However, you have currently given us insufficient information to diagnose the problem. My best guess is that your DHCP server is misconfigured, but I'm at a loss to explain why Windows works anyway.

Yes, you are correct, the DHCP server and the gateway need not be the same machine. What you are attempting to do could, in theory, work (in fact, a friend of mine has the exact same setup).

But, given the fact that things apparently don't work for you, you basically have two choices:
1. Use a static IP, as has been proposed
2. Try to figure out what is wrong with DHCP.

Note that the second option is far more complicated than the first one (although you also may learn more).

Should you try to go for the second alternative, and want to have more help, please do the following:
1. Boot windows, open a dos-box, type ipconfig /all, and post the results
2. Boot linux, log in as root, execute both ifconfig and netstat -r and post the results
3. Also post the content of the /var/lib/dhcp/dhclient.leases file

Good luck!

Kees-Jan

Linux Networking-HOWTO (Previously the Net-3 Howto)

Debian Reference - Network configuration

Configuring network interfaces using DHCP

Low-level configuration of network interfaces can be automated by means of the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). Your firewall or router box or your broadband ISP may furnish IP addresses and other parameters this way.

To make this work you must install one of the following packages:

* dhcp3-client (version 3, Internet Software Consortium)
* dhcpcd (Yoichi Hariguchi and Sergei Viznyuk)
* pump (Red Hat)

pump is simple and widely used. dhcp3-client is complex but more configurable.

Please see my testing below!

A route or a netstat -r command, seems almost give the same result, see below. I logged in as su in a terminal window to have the rights to change.

Before change:

debianwks:/home/lars# route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.7.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
default 192.168.7.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

debianwks:/home/lars# netstat -r
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface
192.168.7.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
default 192.168.7.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

debianwks:/home/lars# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0E:A6:42:3A:FE
inet addr:192.168.7.11 Bcast:192.168.7.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::20e:a6ff:fe42:3afe/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:7 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:1316 (1.2 KiB) TX bytes:1062 (1.0 KiB)

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:128 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:128 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:8252 (8.0 KiB) TX bytes:8252 (8.0 KiB)

After my steps 1-3 change I wrote about earlier:

debianwks:/home/lars# route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.7.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
default 192.168.7.5 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

debianwks:/home/lars# netstat -r
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface
192.168.7.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
default 192.168.7.5 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

debianwks:/home/lars# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0E:A6:42:3A:FE
inet addr:192.168.7.11 Bcast:192.168.7.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::20e:a6ff:fe42:3afe/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:7 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:1316 (1.2 KiB) TX bytes:1062 (1.0 KiB)

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:140 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:140 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:9260 (9.0 KiB) TX bytes:9260 (9.0 KiB)

To be able to remove the VAS domain in the 'Search Domains' field, I press the delete button showed by the picture below

http://www.gustavssons.com/sblog/ima...rksettings.png

An ipconfig /all when booting Windows 2000 from same computer will be as below:

C:\>ipconfig /all

Windows 2000 IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : monster
Primary DNS Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcast
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : VAS

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : VAS
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) PRO/100 VE Network
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-0E-A6-42-3A-FE
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.7.11
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.7.5
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.7.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.7.5
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : den 23 augusti 2005 15.04.59
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : den 23 augusti 2005 15.14.59

Hope it's fully informative.

Only thing missing is the content of your /var/lib/dhcp/dhclient.leases file.

Anyway, if I figured things out correctly, you might want to check out /etc/dhclient.conf and /etc/dhclient-script. They process the received dhcp settings. Manpages available ;-)

Groetjes,

Kees-Jan