Hello all,

I have recently installed RedHat 8.0 (previously ran RH 7.1). After the install, when the machine was booting up and trying to "bring up eth0," I got the error "Determining IP information for eth0... failed."

I am using DCHP and I've been thinking the problem is with my DCHP set up, but of course I could be wrong. (I don't think it is the network card because I've never had these sorts of problems before. For what it's worth its detected by RH as being 3Com 3c905B 100BaseTX [Cyclone]. Also, I have two other machines connecting the same DHCP server with no problem that I know of.)

So I first tried using gnome's network configuration gui to activate eth0. It tells me it "cannot activate the network device eth0." So I've been fumbling around, researching, trying to fix the problem to the best of my ability. Here is what I've found out:

- /etc/resolv.conf has only one line: "search my.domain.edu" where my.domain is my correct domain name

- I don't have a /etc/dhclient.conf file (my other machine has the file /etc/dhclient-eth0.conf)

- /var/lib/dhcp/dhclient-eth0.leases and dhclient.leases are totally empty

- /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 looks like this:
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=yes
USERCTL=no
PEERDNS=no
TYPE=Ethernet
DHCP_HOSTNAME=myhostname.my.domain.edu

I've tried setting PEERDNS to yes and rebooted.... no change.

I noticed that ifcfg-eth0 had permissions different than other, similar files in the network-scripts directory. Changed them and rebooted... no change.

I have also tried calling /sbin/dhclient using the -cf option and a config file I created myself. In this file I put in the line "request domain-name-servers;" I've pasted the output of that below.

Unfortunately, I'm not really sure what to do next or what any of this means. It seems like DCHP cannot find the nameservers??? Any suggestions or input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Rachel

Listening on LPF/eth0/00:c0:4f:8e:dc:4e
Sending on LPF/eth0/00:c0:4f:8e:dc:4e
Listening on LPF/lo/
Sending on LPF/lo/
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
DHCPDISCOVER on lo to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 4
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 10
DHCPDISCOVER on lo to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 12
DHCPDISCOVER on lo to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 19
DHCPDISCOVER on lo to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 12
DHCPDISCOVER on lo to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
DHCPDISCOVER on lo to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 10
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.

Try turning your firewall off...

'service iptables stop' in a terminal

and then bring eth0 up, either with the Network GUI 'activate' or
'ifup eth0' from a terminal

Thanks for the tip. The iptables services was enabled, but after turning it off I still have the same problem. I even tried rebooting after turning iptables off...

Sadly, I don't know much about dealing with networking issues... so hopefully I am making sense. I know the IP addresses for the two nameservers it can use by looking at /etc/resolv.conf on two other machines on the same LAN. Does anyone know if there is a way I can manually tell dchp where to look?

or, is there something else I may have installed that conflicts with dhcp? The dchp package from the RedHat installation is for dhcp servers not clients, correct? I have that installed, but the daemons are not running.

I'm going to start looking for log file that may have clues...

Rachel

BTW, I just added the IP addresses of the nameservers to Primary DNS and Secondary DNS in the gnome network configuration gui.
I now have a resolv.conf with

search my.domain.edu
nameserver xxx.xxx.x.x
nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.x

I also now have a /etc/dhclient-eth0.conf also. I tried adding "request domain-name-servers;" but it didn't make a difference that I could tell.

The leases file is still totally empty though... and the output of /sbin/dhclient is the same.

Any ideas?

Rachel

Rachel,

You are the third person who I have seen recently with 3c905 problems and RH v8.0

I imagine its loading 3c59x.o as a driver for the card? Can you try 3c90x.o and see if that makes a difference?

-KevinJ

Thanks Kevin,

your right it is. I tried to recompile the kernel with 3c90x loaded, but does not seem to be included... so I went to 3Com and downloaded it. I was a little worried because the most recent version of redhat on which 3Com has tested the 3c90x driver is 7.1. When I compiled the module, I had to change one #include, because it was deprecated. Not too big of a deal. But I still couldn't load it. It dies with an error "init_module: no such device." Not sure what to do with that...

I have another machine with the same card and its using the same driver, running 8.0. What's the deal? Maybe if I reinstall I'll luck out.

Rachel

IM(never humble)O the driver from 3Com blows and the one in the kernel rocks so I'd keep using 3c59x.

You wouldn't happen to be plugged into a school network would you...(is it that time of year again?) if so see:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=42554