Hello,

I have recently installed Suse linux 9.1 onto my IBM G40 laptop. It has a built in NIC card. My home network is setup such that I have a wired D-Link DI-604 router which is connected a DSL modem and i have connected my laptop to the router. I have configured the laptop to get the ip through DHCP, enabled ip forwarding, etc (via Yast). The router however does not seem to get an ip from the router. At the boot screen when it tries to the ip via DHCP it says that the process is backgrouding and waiting. Assigning a static ip does not seem to help as well.

I am unable to ping the router (ie when i ping 192.168.0.1 i get no response back).

Under Yast i can see that the os sees the ethernet controler. Upon inspection of the light on the nic, before the computer is on the light is on and during the boot process that light comes off (well just blinks slowly). It turns back on again when i shutdown the computer. It seems to me that linux is turning off the nic somehow and I am lost as to why this is occuring. Has anyone experienced this? Any suggestions?

Thank You,

Razz04

I'm posting because I had a lot of trouble getting SuSE Pro 9.1 to see anything outside the LAN myself, on two seperate boxes with differing network hardware... The default install would give me the same DHCP process backgrounding message that you are receiving, but in my case I would actually get an IP address later on, only for some reason, SuSE would not resolve any addresses outside the LAN. All the settings were correct, but it just wouldn't work. I resolved this by specifying the default gateway on one box, and on the other I had to manually insert almost everything except the IP address it was to use for itself.

I say that to prepare you for what may happen. As it stands, it seems like the BIOS on your laptop is seeing the NIC, almost as if it has the "Wake On LAN" option enabled. Perhaps when the OS takes over control of the NIC, it is turning it off by default. Have you tried issuing the "ifup eth0" command, as root? There was a time with my laptop that I had to su as root, issue "ifup eth0", "ifdown eth0", then "ifup eth0" again to get the address info to set properly. By your remark that the NIC's lights turn off once the OS is in control, I think that turning on the interface by using the previous commands will at least get it recognized by your system.

Good luck!

Hey thanks for your reply,

I have tried the ifdown eth0 command to turn the nic off. Up on doing this sure enough the light on the nic turns back on. ifup eth0 end up turning the nic off. When it tries and gets an ip from the router the process backgrounds like it does when booting up. I have turned of the wake on lan in the BIOS and it does not make any difference. I am lost as I do no understand why it is doing this. Maybe a driver update is needed for the nic? Any suggestions?

Razz04

That sounds really odd - are you saying that the NIC is backwards? When you turn it off, (ifdown eth0), the lights turn ON?!? And vice-versa?

This is outside of my experience, and I'm sorry that I can't help more... I'm new to Linux myself, and I just happened to have had a similar problem when I was getting started.

Did the NIC work properly under your former operating system?

Yeah that's what happened.. After working on it for a week i gave up and installed Suse 9.2 last night. My internet works perfectly under 9.2. I am guessing it may have been a driver problem as version 9.2 configured the networking card with a different driver and it worked. I guess I will never know for certain why I did not get networking configured correctly under Suse proffessional 9.1.

Thank you for your suggestions Spamsonite

Razz04