Hi! This is my first linux installation and I was wondering if someone could help me hooking it up to the net.

I have mandrake 10 and a 3com ethernet card. The connection goes through a router to an adsl modem so we can share the internet.

I have tried drackconnect to set up a new LAN network configuration and I think this has worked as I can ping the modem and the network monitor shows recieving and sending packets. However when I press the connect button for the internet it will either stop after two .'s in the status bar. Or will connect then drop the connection after about 5 seconds.

I also can't reach the admin page of my adsl modem, which I thought would be possible if the network is working ok. (Everything works fine in windows so the actual equipment is ok).

DHCP is enabled if that is any help.

Also please could someone explain what a ZeroConf Hostname is and what it does?

Thanks for any help! The sooner I can use Linux as a primary OS the better

I would suggest taking the router out of the chain as an experiment to see if you can connect and stay connected with it gone. If so, then you will know the router's the problem. I don't use a router, so I can't help you with that part.

Also try, instead of using the network connection wizard type thing, typing (as root)

and see if it connects and stays connected.

I have had lots of trouble getting the Mandriva (formerly Mandrake...) control panel to work right when trying to get my ADSL connection going. The connection can be totally OK sometimes yet Mandriva/drake doesn't seem to recognize it. For instance, it has repeatedly insisted on saying I have a LAN connection, when I don't.

Once I get a good pppoe setup working, I never have to use the control panel thing anymore. I can start and stop ADSL from the command line. I use Roaring Penguin pppoe, if it makes any difference.

I hope this gives you at least some starting point for troubleshooting.

(Edit: Sorry, I left the hyphen out of "adsl-start" at first.)

DHCP is usually pretty painless to setup and normaly you don't have to do anything. "Jonr" had a good suggestion to take the router out of the loop for now to see if it connects directly to the modem.

Not sure what you mean when you say:

Normally you would not connect/disconnect unless you specifically wanted to stop net traffic.

Try running (with your router connected)

netstat -nr

Should give you something like this.

Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface
192.168.2.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
0.0.0.0 192.168.2.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

Then try checking your ifcfg-eth0 file:

cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

check that Device is pointing to the correct NIC and that DHCP is enabled.

DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp

Also for connecting to your router's Web interface. Get the "Gateway" address from the netstat output... Mine is 192.168.2.1 This should be the address for your router configuration:

http://192.168.2.1

Check if you have any firewalls or other security setup there. Strange though. If it worked in Windows then I don't think it would be a router issue.

Maybe your NIC is on eth1 for some reason. Netstat should tell you that though.

Good Luck

KC