I cannot figure out how to get Linux (SuSE 8.2) to recognize that i am connected to an ethernet router. It recognized my onboard Lan, which is installed, but I cannot figure out what to do from there. The manuals somewhere said to use a program called LISa, but i could not find that anywhere. The NIS also seems to not be working, but i am not certaint on if im doing everything correctly. Any help would be appriciated.

How do you connect, what's your network setup like, and what's your oboard ethernet device?

Welcome to LQ

Moving to Linux - Networking

Cool

My network setup is a linksys broadband router on one computer (recieving a road runner cable service) with a cat 5 wire running to my computer (and sending a wireless signal to a third).

My onboard network is a ReaLTek RTL8100BL on a Gigabyte mainboard.

also, the connection works fine in windows..

since you are a newbie, you need to enable DHCP on your Linux box. Windows 2000/XP does this automatically (for the most part). DHCP is Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, it basically gives your machine its street address. However, Linux doesn't have DHCP enabled by default, so you need to go into your network settings and find the area where it says "Obtain IP address automatically." Also, make sure your router is set up to be a DHCP server for your Linux box. Your router will be the all knowing and all wise one who will assign ip addresses to all of the computers in your local net. The only other alternative is to set up IP addresses manually, but that may be too advanced for you right now.

Both the router and the network card have DHCP enabled (underneth the name of the network card it says eth0 DHCP enabled) and i have it set to obtain IP automatically. Still nothing though. when i try using konqorer or mozilla it still refuses to connect to anything.

Open up a console and enter ifconfig. If you can see that your card is there, but doesn't have an IP address, then entery dhcpcd eth0. That should cause eth0 to send out a DHCP request and (hopefully) get an IP address.

IP adress is there, it seems like it is connected to the internet (mozilla even says im connected).
Still, neither konqueror or mozilla will connect to any webpages, suse help or anything else. is there:
a) any other way i can tell if its recognozing the connection (i typed ping in a console and is came up with a bunch of things in [brackets] like [-s packets] but typing any of those does nothing)?
b) something i have to do to get the web browsers to recognize the connection (if there is one)

thx for help and patiance

go into your iptables (firewall) and disable everything. If you are using the GUI go to "system settings" and then "securiry level." There you able to adjust your firewall rules accordingly. Be aware though, that upon returning to the firewall rules it will appear to be back at "high" setting. The way to find out that your firewall is open is to go to the console and type "iptables -L". You need to be logged in as 'root' for this to work. You should see no rules at all, just blank areas under the headings "target. prot option source and so on"

go into your iptables (firewall) and disable everything. If you are using the GUI go to "system settings" and then "securiry level." There you able to adjust your firewall rules accordingly. Set it to "no firewall", Be aware though, that upon returning to the firewall rules it will appear to be back at "high" setting, this is not the case though. The way to find out that your firewall is open is to go to the console and type "iptables -L". You need to be logged in as 'root' for this to work. You should see no rules at all, just blank areas under the headings "target. prot option source and so on"

Hmm. If you have an IP address, that suggests DHCP is working, but have a look in your Linksys router DHCP table to make sure. Why don't you post the results of route -n. Basically, you want to make sure that the gateway for your ethernet card is your router and not something else.

Ummm...

I tried to turn off the firewall but it was already off.

The router -n said:

Destination Gateway Genmask flags metric ref Use Iface
196.128.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 u 0 0 0 eht0
0.0.0.0 196.128.1.1 0.0.0.0 ug 0 0 0 eth0

in the IF Config there was an IP adress. I noticed there were 524 packets (rx and tx) with no losses, drops, or errors. If im not mistaken that means im connected to the internet, right?

im not sure if theres anything else in the IP table i need to know, but there was alot of "Accept"s and "anywhere"s.

Just to ask the obvious question, is your Linksys router at 192.128.1.1? Also, can you ping your router (you may have to enable the router to reply to ping first. I think Linksys prevents ping response by default).

You could also try pinging LQO a couple different ways

ping www.linuxquestions.org
ping 64.179.4.146

If the first fails, but the second succeeds, you've got a DNS problem.

Also, you might want to post the results of iptables -L.

Pinging the site adress did not work at all (unable to reach host) the ip adress gave 400+ lines of saying something like host unreachable.

OK, now for the other two questions:

Is your router at 192.128.1.1?
What is the output from iptables -L?

The results of the iptables:

linux:~ # iptables -L
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination

and as far as i know the router is the same IP as me. I am not certain though, and the router is not very easy to work with. I know i have DHCP enabled though.