I fixed the mouse problem (see prev thread) and now have moved on to getting the box online.

In Mandrake 9.1 what is all the internet and ethernet card configuration carried out in? Mandrake control centre and linuxconf? And how do I configure the ethernet card to automatically get an IP address via DCHP?

I'm very new to this so please excuse me if i'm talking absolute bollocks and none of this makes any sense :-)

Will Mandrake detect the modems IP address and all the settings? I have tried a few things like the network/internet wizard with no luck. It detects the ethernet card but that's as far as I can get.

Are there any tutorials about this written in plain english?

Cheers

Honestly dude, open a terminal, Konsole, xterm, aterm, whatever, use the command:

su -

to become root, and then:

dhcpcd eth0

Its just that easy. If you get a dhcpcd command not found error, its an RPM on the CDs with no dependencies I don't think, at least none you haven't already got installed. Offhand I don't know how to get it through the GUIs anymore, especially not Mandy's ever changing Drak-goo.

Cheers,

Finegan

It's that simple? If it is then hopefully I should get it online tonight!

We'll see what happens I suppose. Should I expect to need to configure anything else or will that open up the connection?

Cheers

One problem I ran into when getting online was making sure the modem was configured properly. If you get a host not found error or something like that, be sure to unplug the power from your cable modem, count to ten, then plug it back in. Once it's done doing it's thing, try dhcpcd again. This has nothing to do with mandrake just a heads up on hardware stuff.

I'm with NTL world. They don't officially support linux, and so I have to set up the connection using Windows using dual-boot. Once done, (and in my case once the nForce drivers from nVidia had been installed for my ethernet,) then the Internet Connection Wizard in Mandrake Control Centre detected and installed everything for me!

However, I think I could have got away with setting up in Windows if I knew how to get (a) my MAC number and (b) the IP address that my computer was attempting to use (as displayed in the Windows program winipcfg.exe). Coz when I had to set up a new computer and couldn't get the ethernet connection to start from the NTL disks, that's what they asked me for.

So: how do I get these numbers?

DAVE

hmmm, with NTL you don't need either of those numbers to get set up. You may need to use windows to register the MAC address with them (this is done via a website so may be possible in linux). Then Once that's done you're laughing.

just use your username as the argument for the host option with dhcpcd as follows:

HTH

Alex

P.S. surely you would only know the IP address if you were connected already? In which case, what's the point in ringing NTL for help (what's the point anyway to be quite honest).

P.P.S. Not sure whether they register the MAC address of the cable modem or the ethernet card in your machine. For the MAC address of your ethernet card, /sbin/ifconfig shows you this detail. The first line, 'HWaddr' the following alpha-numeric characters. But this also relies on the connection being up though you could temporarily set it up with a dummy ip address just to get the MAC address.

What happened is that I registered my connection originally using USB and Windows. After that, I discovered Linux. When my computer broke down I had to get some new gear and reload programs. I did Win98SE first but as I had some problems with USB in Linux this time I tried to connect using the Ethernet connection. The NTL CD did not get me registered so I phoned for help, and having checked my ethernet was set up correctly the woman at the other end asked me to run winipcfg. She took the IP number from it and announced I was now on line, and I was! No stupid "Correct Connect" software either (a bonus in itself)! When I later set up the Linux partition, and once I had correctly installed the nVidia nForce driver to enable my ethernet connection in Linux, it just found the connection.

Problem: With the old USB I could find the MAC address using KDE Control Centre, but with the ethernet I can't. If I have to change my computer again in future, I may need to find it as, by then, I may have found GNU/Linux programs to replace Windows ones, so won't want to load Windows.

That is why I need to know which file is it stored in?

DAVE

Bingo!

MAC address is on the bottom of the modem apparently according to NTL's documentation on the web
let me have a little look.......yep, its on mine (a Terayon TJ210)

HTH

Alex

Oh dear so it is!

Hang on, that's the number I got when I connected it via USB. I think I get a different one under ethernet... I'll have to go back into Windoze later to check...

DAVE

If you do then this must be why.

When you have an ethernet card, the ethernet card's MAC address is given to NTL. This is all fine and dandy due to the fact that its integral in their design/use that they have one. However, a cable modem doesn't need one (and the first load prob don't have one) since they are connected by ethernet cards to a computer (they are a modem in that the modulate and demodulate the signal they get through the cable, nowt else). However, when you have a USB connection as well the cable modem has to have an ethernet interface built in to connect with the servers (it might just be minimal with the most work done in software, that's why if you're processor is being used extensively while using USB the connection will slow down). Therefore, when the USB port is used instead of the ethernet it uses its internal ethernet capabilities and its MAC address.

That's my hypothesis anyway.

Alex