HI-

The networking configuration on the Debian kernel on my Dell Latitude X300 laptop was working just fine until I plugged it in today. Right now the ifconfig insists that there's an eth0 connection running, and the resolv.conf file shows that I have an active IP address etc. But I can't get any info back to my laptop from the internet. Nothing happens when I try to ssh out, ping, or browse the web. It's like I can send stuff out, and the cable is active (blinking lights, etc), but nothing can come back in. I didn't change anything in the configuration that would cause this to happen. When I run under the windows kernel, I can connect to the internet just fine on the same cable, so it's not a local firewall.

So I can't figure out what's up. The only clue I have is that when I boot up the linux kernel, after it successfully gets the network configuration addresses etc from dhcp discover, a message comes up a little later in the boot sequence which says 'Network Interface Plugging Daemon : Sorry, already an instance of ifplugd for eth0 running'. Similarly, when I do an 'ifconfig eth0 inet down', it takes the network down for a sec (it beeps when it does this), and then brings it right back up without me asking it to. So that when I do an 'ifconfig' after telling it to take eth0 down, I should only see the 'lo' status info - but instead the 'eth0' info is still there. It's like there's a rogue eth0 daemon running around that automatically keeps coming back up and so it looks like eth0 is active but it doesn't belong to either root or my user account, and consequently I can't get the incoming connection to work from the internet to either the root or my user account. (I also tried restarting the network with /etc/init.d/networking restart, which didn't change anything. Interestingly, when I did an /etc/init.d/networking stop, it stopped my lo connection but the eth0 again automatically restarted so that when I did an ifconfig the lo had disappeared (as expected) but the eth0 was still there, albeit with no IP address etc.)

Any thoughts on what the problem is? If I have a rogue eth0 daemon
(ifplugd?) how do I get rid of it? (Yes, I tried looking at the root
processes, but couldn't figure out what I should kill - I tried killing
ifplugd but that didn't seem to help.) IS there something I should try
reinstalling?

Cheers
Reba

post your /etc/network/interfaces.
seems like the two of them are messed up somehow. if so, once you post them, we should be able to help you out.

cheers.