just recently performed a fresh install of redhat 9, and can't get my internet connection working at home. ive got comcast cable internet, with a motorola surfboard cable modem and a linksys router. my linux laptop is connected to the router.

how can i set this up? i have no clue where to start. never had this problem connecting to my network at college. i did a forum search for "comcast", but didnt really find anything pertaining to redhat i could try.

thanx in advance

I have almost the identical setup in mandrake 9.2. That modem can use either usb or ethernet. I could never get it working with usb but had no problems at all with ethernet.
I assume since you have the linksys router your using ethernet. Correct me if I'm wrong.
If that's the case, RH may be having some issues with the the nic in your laptop. What kind of laptop is it and what kind of nic does it have? Some of the integrated nics in laptops can cause problems.

im using a Dell Inspiron 5150 with a Broadcom nic.

If this is the integrated Broadcom NIC, you've got a couple of choices. You can go to Broadcom's download page and get the Linux drivers, or you can compile a custom kernel with support for the Broadcom. That's the route I took and it works fine.

k, ill give that the drivers a try.

now here's another question...how can i get the drivers if i dont have internet in linux? i was gonna download them onto my windows drive and mount the drive, but i remember i had to download something to allow for mounting of ntfs drives...

plz tell me i dont have to burn a cd just to get drivers, do i? i dont have any floppy drive on my laptop, although i do have a USB memory stick. could i put the drivers on that and mount the USB stick?

If your installed setup supports USB, I'd go with the USB stick option.

If that doesn't work, what windows software do you use to burn CDs? Some of them (Roxio comes to mind) support burning multiple sessions to a single CD. I've got the same problem in that my linux box doesn't have a floppy drive, and since I don't have a USB stick, I just dedicated a CD to linux stuff and kept burning to it until I got the network connection working.

<edit>
Sorry, I forgot about one important option. Insufficient coffee.....

The other alternative is to load the kernel source code from your distro CD, if they have it, and compile a new kernel. The integrated Broadcom card IS supported in the kernel (Network Devices section). That allows you to get around the problem of mounting USB sticks or burning CDs.
</edit>

okay, i dled the drivers and burned them to a cd. i was attempting to install them in linux and i kept getting errors like "Linux kernel source tree not found" or something similar to that (from what i remember from booting back and forth betw. windows...).

any thoughts? maybe i should try loading the kernel source code from my distro CD, like hangdog said. how would i go about doing that, and compiling a new kernel as well?

From the error message, it looks like you need the kernel source installed for the drivers to compile. You DEFINITELY want to get that from your distro CDs so that the source code matches the version of the compiled kernel you are using.

I think the RPM is called kernel-versionnumber-src.rpm. It should be on your RH CD somewhere and you can install it with rpm.

okay, ive installed the kernel source like you've said and ive gotten farther in the driver installation.

now ive gotten to a point in the installation where i have to execute "insmod bcm4400". when i do, i get a bash error, indicating that the command insmod is not found.

do i have to run it from a certain dir or something? im so close....

At least on my system, insmod is in the infamous /sbin directory. What you can do (as root) is type the full path and command. So try /sbin/insmod bcm4400 and see what that gets you.

By the way, when you get a "not found" message, you might want to try locate commandname and see if that finds it.

okay, im FINALLY online....thanx a bunch hangdog

btw, "locate commandname" is one of the best newbie tips yet...