Unable to Access the Internet - not sure why
 

Hi -

When I start up a browser (mozilla/galleon), they report that they are unable to find the names of websites I put into the address bar. According to lspci, my ethernet card is:

00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 10/100 Ethernet (rev 91)

I did the following things. After each, I rebooted the computer and attempted to access the Internet. I failed each time. The moment I plug the ethernet cable into the machine (Dell Inspiron 1000 running Slackware 9.1 under kernel 2.4.22), the PC and data lights on my cable modem light up and blink repectively (the same thing that happens when I connect the ethernet cable to my desktop and my connection to the Internet works properly):

1. I typed:

echo "sis900" >> /etc/modules

into the shell.

2. I added:

alias eth0 sis900

to /etc/modules.conf.

The following seem like relevant kernel messages (found using dmesg):

PCI: Found IRQ 4 for device 00:04.0
eth0: Realtek RTL8201 PHY transceiver found at address 1.
eth0: Using transceiver found at address 1 as default
eth0 SiS 900 PCI Fast Ethernet at 0x1800, IRQ 4, 00:0f:1f:a9:55:99.

And incidentally, I have the following line in my /var/log/syslog:

Jul 19 20:14:27 darkstar modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module char-major-10-134

What do I need to do to get my computer talking to the Internet?

Thanks,

Brian

Post the results of the command <ifconfig> (as root). One of the most common problem is the lack of DNS address.

ifconfig results
 

There's an "lo" in the upper left and then the following is indented (first line is on the line with the "lo"):

Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
TX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

Your nic doesn't have a valid IP.
I don't know how you connect, I guess you should use DHCP? Try 'netconfig' or similar (I'm not on a Linuxbox, can't check it)
You could verify that the card is working by giving it a static IP:
# ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.1
If no errormessages, also try pinging it, card should work
If you can't assign an IP then the card is not correctly installed.

On the Internet! - Still have a couple of questions....
 

OK - so I'm on the Internet, writing this message from my browser right now. I used the command "ipconfig/all" in DOS on my desktop and then transferred the DNS servers to my linux laptop to the /etc/resolv.conf file (I found this after the mentions of the common problem being DNS - I found this thread http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=123779 ). Thanks for all your help! This brings me to my question:

1. Is there a way I can do this with linux? I'm going to NYU next year and want to be able to plug into an arbitrary ethernet port in a library/dorm/etc. and access the Internet without consulting a Windows machine. How can I do this?

If your dhcp daemon is working properly, it puts the dns ip information in /etc/resolve.conf.

DHCP Daemon
 

OK - so clearly it is not. I had to manually enter the DNS addresses. How can I check my DHCP daemon?

I'm not familiar with slackware. There usually is a graphical setup for the network where you can choose to use DHCP. When you are living on campus, you will probably have to use it. You should be able to manually restart the service and then check with ifconfig if your interface has a valid ip address. Then check the resolv.conf to see if the dns addresses are in there.
There may be three different DHCP clients that you could choose from. so if one doesn't work right, select another. Mandrake has 3 dhcp clients, and SuSE three. One is called dhcpcd. This client doesn't need a configuration file to function. Another is dhclient which uses the /etc/dhclient.conf configuration file. If I remember correctly there may also one called dhcp-client. One or two of these should be available, and information on the corresponding configuration files should exist in a man or info page.

There are a bunch of DHCP daemons for linux. The most common are dhcp, pump, and bootp. Which one to pick to use at your destination...well I do not know. You have to trial and erorr until one works with the DHCP servers.

You may want to read some howtos at The Linux Documentation Project.

You can always use Knoppix to get the DNS information.

Sorry, I can not help you what file to edit because Mandrake uses scripts and some unusual file names to setup networking for both static and dynamic setups.

Look in /sbin or /usr/sbin for the scripts 'ifup', 'ifdown', and ifstatus'. These commands can be used to start, stop network interfaces or check on their status.

Look in your /etc directory for files in
/etc/sysconfig/network.

I am not sure how standard the configuration files are in this directory.
There may be configuration files with names like 'ifcfg-eth0.eth0' 'ifcfg-<MAC hardware address w/o colons>' , 'ifcfg-eth-pcmcia-0'.

Take a look at these files. The first line for your interface probably contains the line 'BOOTPROTO="static". If you were using DHCP it would be 'BOOTPROTO="dhcp".

If you have a file that looks like ifcfg-00086386be3 for the eth0 NIC card, then the file ifcfg-eth0 will be ignored.

So one possible source for your original problem is that you had hardware tracking selected in the Initial setup, and now it isn't but the original setup file still exists. I think that this option uses the MAC address configuration files.

On the plus side, suppose that you had a laptop and you had an extra PCMCIA network card. If the ifcfg file didn't exist for the specific card or PCMCIA slot you could set up the configuration, then copy the file using the filename 'ifcfg-MACnumber'. This would allow you to use one card when at School using DHCP and another card for home set statically. Or each could have different static configurations. This would be a way of avoiding having to reconfigure when moving from one network to another.