I decided to start messing around with linux the other day, and I chose openSUSE as my distro because I know it has alot of support for wireless networking and bluetooth.

I downloaded the 40mb iso with the intent to network boot and install openSUSE like that, but it kept telling me that the installation repository I selected was wrong. (On account of something being wrong with the network connection?) . I naturally assumed this was me being clueless, so I downloaded CD's 1-5 and decided to install it with all the media available to me.



I've install it and got it working, but something that should be SO SIMPLE is causing me great headaches. I can't get eth0 to take on a DHCP address. I've tried using the console, I've tried using the graphic interface, I've tried setting a static IP, I've tried everything I can think of.

eth0 in my case is a Broadcom 440x 10/100 Integrated Controller on my laptop, and it works fine configured for DHCP when I boot into windows. If I set it staticly, with an inet address, subnet mask, gateway, and name servers, it cannot connect, saying unable to resolve host names. (I've tried as many DNS servers as I have knowledge of, and double checked their IPs)

When I set it to DHCP, it justs sits there, waiting for the address from the DHCP server (in this case a linksys home cable router), which I know is also working perfectly.

All the firewall settings are off, because I didn't want to run into stupid issues like blocking port 53 or whatever DHCP uses, so that's not it, but it's not working.

I'd have posted records of my ifconfig for you guys to look over, but as I can't get onto the web from linux, it's more effort than I'd like.

So my question is this. Is there something that I should try? Anyone see anything off the bat that seems strange? Is it something to do with the fact that IP6 is also trying to run on that interface?

I'm the newbie here, I need some collective wisdom.

Type dmesg in a console and look for the references to eth0.

Which driver is being loaded? Do lsmod for a list..
What is it's pci-id number? Do lspci -n for a list of hardware.

Hi,

This sounds similar to a problem i was having with mandrake 10.1 and intel pro 100/ve NIC. I downloaded lastest driver from Intel, installed, everything seemed to work, could ping 127.0.0.1, but couldnt ping anything outside, or get ip address from dhcp server.. My router could see the mac address of this pc, but not the ip address (if i set ot to static) or netbios name.. But yet everything worked fine in Windows XP so i knew it wasnt a hardware problem..

modprobe loaded the NIC card module with out errors, lsmod showed the module for the netcard was loaded, ethtools showed everything seemed to be working, as did ifconfig..

How did i fix it ? - I installed Suse 9.2, whiched worked fine, as did centOS.. It must have just been something weird in mandrake that stuffed it up..