A few weeks ago I installed Mandrake 9.0 Linux on my pc as as second OS (I already had WinXP installed) and have come a cross a very strange problem: I am conneted to internet via LAN, but my LAN (under LInux) connection only works after I have booted WINXP and restarted the computer!
When I start Linux without startin WIN before it none of the browsers work, nor do the e-mail clients, and can't even get a ping from the gateway, but after windows ( only when I use "restart" button from teh shutdown menu of windows, after pressing the reset button on the tower or turning the computer of and then back on it dosen't work) it works normaly.
Has anybody had this problem before? TIA for any ideas you might have.

P.S. I called my provider's tech support and the only response I got was: "I have no idea what's going on, just switch back to windows, Linux is not a serious OS anyway, blah, blah blah....

does the isp require a hostname to login?

if so you need to send the hostname with dhcp


you can add it to the file /etc/sysconfig/network if that's the problem


HOSTNAME=yourhostname


command line use dhcpcd -h yourhostname

Nope. It's not it. Well at least in windows I don't have to have an exact hostname ( I asked them before and they said that i can put in anything I want and what they usualy put-wich is what i put in under hotname in ect/sysconfig/network, by them I mean the guys at the isp techsupport(if ypu can call it that))
Colud it be that if this option is not requiered by my isp, the fact that I have somethig under hostename is what makes the problems?

What kind of network card?

Old ISA PnP cards used to exibit the same thing (but Linux has ISA PnP support now so that can be fixed) but still if it works after a "soft boot" then it sounds like a network card deal.

Also try looking in your BIOS settings for something with a name like "PnP OS" or "Windows OS" or "Plug and Play aware Operating System" and set it to no, which won't usually break Windows but may make Linux start working.

try to start dhcp manually if you have not tried it yet. While you do that check the log files

I have a Dimond multimedia HomeFree PCI network card (the one with both ethernet and pone line port). However, Linux (as well as windows for that matter) recognized it as an AMD HomePNA. In control center under Information, pci it says:

00:06.0 Ethernet contloller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] 79c978 [HomePNA] (rev51)
Subsystem: Diamond Multimedia Systems: Unknowndevice 0a82
Flags: busmaster, medium devsel, latency32 IRQ 11

Dont know if this tells you anything...
Didn't find anything like PnP OS in BIOS (I remember there used to be something somewhere in the bios of the motherboard I had before this one, don remember where)