OK, I'm a loser. I'm getting nowhere with this. Worst of all it's my everyday use computer, the one that I use instead of MS win... I'm still a total green-horn.

PLEASE HELP

I upgraded my mixed Debian installation and now eth0 is not up after boot. If I bring it up manually with ifconfig eth0 up, it comes up, but there is no line that starts with
inet addr [address]

I've tried to find a way to get a dhcp client to get an address, but nothing like dhcpcd or dhcp3 or anything else seems to be installed anymore.

I boot with a knoppix cd and internet connection is ok, so the pcmcia card works (at least with Knoppix)

I tried downloading dhcp3-client_3.0.3-5_i386.deb on my backup, then copying to the problem machine and installing with dpkg -i /package/location, but got a message that this package conflicted with dhcp in pump.

I get the following after manually bringing up eth0 with ifconfig:
pearman@pearman:~$ ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:BA:7C:9C:FC
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:326 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:27600 (26.9 KiB) TX bytes:342 (342.0 b)
Interrupt:3 Base address:0x300

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:61 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:61 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:3812 (3.7 KiB) TX bytes:3812 (3.7 KiB)

root@pearman:/home/pearman# pump -i eth0 --status
Device eth0
IP: 192.168.1.33
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Broadcast: 255.255.255.255
Network: 192.168.1.0
Boot server 192.168.1.1
Next server 0.0.0.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
Gateways: 192.168.1.1
Nameservers: 192.168.1.1
Renewal time: Sat Jan 21 07:51:10 2006
Expiration time: Thu Feb 2 16:51:10 2006

root@pearman:/home/pearman# ifup eth0
Ignoring unknown interface eth0=eth0

Everything was fine before upgrading packages. I get the feeling that there's something wrong during boot. There's a lot that goes by on the screen and it's clear that at some point, dhcp (of some flavor) is reported to be getting an IP address, then is 'backgrounded'. I'd include that boot info, but I don't know how to capture it.

I did : /etc/init.d/networking restart

But this doesn't change the status of eth0 in any way that I can see.

Any ideas on getting a ip address at boot would be GREATLY appreciated! I'd be happy to try to provide more infomation, just tell me what you want to know.

Best,

Peter

Debian mixed (originally from a Knoppix CD years ago)
2.4.24 kernel
adsl router
Dell inspiron 8100 laptop

Try as root user and reconfigure your card

nixcraft,

OK! First I had to download it and a couple of the dependencies onto my backup and transfer them over on a floppy. Upon installing etherconf, some text stated that another program was currently configuring those services and whether I wanted etherconf to do it instead. I accepted that and then ran it.

It worked. I re-booted a few times and it seems to be ok. Thank you very much.

Now, there is a LOT of stuff that goes by on the monitor during boot. There seems to be more every time I upgrade packages. Some of this I recognize as output from scripts called in rc6.d.

Do you have any ideas on where all the other text get generated? There are certainly a few things I'd like to remove and there are some errors that I could address if I could only:

direct the output somewhere

figure out where some of the rest of the text is coming from.

Some of it is from modules that fail to load because they can't be found, for example.

Peter