I recently installed Suse 8.1 Pro, I have one network card connected to a hub with other Windows based machines and a firewall with the addr of 192.168.0.1 which is the gateway.

The net card is addressed as 192.168.0.99 with the .1 as the gateway. Lights on the card and hub indicate connection is good and I'm able to ping the card address itself. However, pinging the gateway gives "not found..." I'm about at my wits end here !!!

Any ideas anyone.

Rod

Try setting eth0 as 192.168.0.2 (or nearest open) and double check gateway is 192.168.0.1, broadcast is 192.168.0.255, and subnet is 255.255.255.0. I'm out of ideas really.

Firewalls often don't respond to pings. Who configured it and how is it handling ICMP?

Try this - once you have pinged the gateway, and got no response, use the arp command to show your arp table and look for an entry corresponding to your gateway. Is there a valid mac address there or does it say pending or waiting? If its pending then you have real hardware/driver problems, if it has the mac address but no ping response it means that the gateway is not responding to ICMP. You would then need to look at the firewall rules to see what its up to.

I came across the same problem.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Linux.
You might try these as well.

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*** Be sure to keep a running log of your troubleshooting activities and a record of changes you make to you suse box, any other box, and your network. ***
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The following l-o-n-g laundry list is not in any specific order, so I'm advising you to print and read through it at least once before you start troubleshooting. I also suggest that you create bookmarks/shortcuts to web resources specified within this document.
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Now for the l-i-s-t:
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- disable the IPv6 module from loading... lsmod will help you identify it. Comment out the ipv6 alias to turn it off in /etc/modules.conf.

- disable the firewall services completely until you establish proper functionality of TCP/IP.. ex: can ping gateway, can ping www.yahoo.com, can browse the web, can ping other hosts (linux or windows) on same physical LAN.

- try adding the hostnames and ip addresses of your windows machines to the /etc/hosts file on your suse v8.1 box.

- try switching to a static ip setting, if your LAN environment will allow you to.

- try using the alternate dhcp client module. One of the modules is "dhcpd" (spelling maybe incorrect, pls double-check) there is another as well. If you picked dhcp client during installation chances are that the Yast installer only installed one of the client modules, not both... So, you may need to pull out your CD's and install the alternate module. The installer will tell you which cd it needs.

- verify TCP/IP and routing configuration via Yast, ifconfig, route, ifup, ifdown, ifstatus (or ifstat), /etc/modules.conf, and files residing in /etc/sysconfig/network.

- verfiy that the dhcp client module is loaded and running. ifstatus or ifconfig may be useful here.

**** If you make changes to any of the files with the /etc directory tree, make a backup first !!!! *****

- at boot up check to see if initialization of eth0 fails... use dmesg to assist you. You may need to employ the "more" or the "less" command when using dmesg.
ex: dmesg | less

- if you are unsure about any linux/unix commands try using the online manual tool "man" or the info tool "info", as well as online documentation. Here is the command prompt syntax:
* man <the command>
* man -k <the command>
* info <the command>

Try these at the command prompt:
ex: man ifconfig
ex: man -k ifconfig
ex: info route

- try to ping your suse box from the windows boxes.

- verify that you have no resources conflicts such irq or i/o port address conflicts. /sbin/lspci may be of assistance.

- using your windows boxes try to browse to suse box using web browser. If you have apache installed see of you get the default apache page on your suse box.

- reply to this with full details about the hardware and software configuration of your suse box and your network. This may provide valuable clues about your problem. For example, setting up your suse box in a corporate network managed by an I.T. department is different in some aspects to setting it up behind a linksys firewall/router box or setting it up directly connected to a cable/dsl modem (PPPOE environment). Run the following commands and post the output with your reply:

* lspci
* lspcidrake (this is a mandrake specific tool, but there may be a suse equiv in "/sbin", "/bin", "/usr/bin", "/usr/sbin".

* cat /etc/modules.conf
* lsmod
* cat /etc/resolv.conf
* cat /etc/sysconfig/network
* cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
* route -n
* ifconfig -a
* chkconfig --list network
* rpm -q dhcpcd

- goto to www.suse.com and browse their support pages, and how-to/faq pages.

- re-read the manual. I'm on my 9th re-read and I've found something I missed or overlooked even on the 7th re-read.

- reinstalling suse but reduce the number of packages especially network services.

- replace the existing nic with another, such as a 3Com nic.

- search www.asusboards.com within the linux forums for posts by me "jqpdev" and other suse users

- search www.justlinux.com for posts by me "jqpdev" and other suse users

- goto broadband reports @ www.dslreports.com, create an account and browse their linux and networking forums again there are posts by you-know-who. You may find more of my posts by searching for issues relating to "destination host unreachable", "mandrake", "mandrake9", or "mdk9". I use both suse and mandrake.

- check rute's on-line book to linux networking/routing at
Rute's Linux Tutorial

- browse mandrake's forums @ www.mandrake.com for posts by jqpdev

- check out www.tweakhound.com

- check out www.tldp.org

- browse the forums of other linux distros. (redhat, slackware, mandrake, turbolinux, sco linux, etc.)

- search newsgroup archives at google... www.google.com

- check out the linux knowledge portal @
http://www.linux-knowledge-portal.org/en/index.php

- check out http://slashdot.org/

- www.freshmeat.net

- www.linuxtoday.com

- www.ibiblio.org

- http://www.distrowatch.com/ (info about different distributions)

- goto www.internet.com. move your mouse of the diagnal "linux/open source" menu item. You will find plenty links there.


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*** I usually don't advocate piracy and theft of intellectual property, but if you have kazaa or another p2p tool on one of your windows boxes, do a document search for "linux", "redhat", "red hat", "suse", or "mandrake". You may find some good information resources in pdf format.
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Its plenty of reading, re-reading and site searching, but you gain and education in networking, linux, and how to work the web.

I have tried most of 'jpqdev's fixes listed above with no avial.

Description of system:
ABIT VP6 motherboard, 2-933Hhz CPU's
2 40M IDE drives
1G memory
D-Link 530-TX NIC

Discription of network:
1 Win2K Server
1 Win2K Workstation
1 HPLaserJet4 printer
1 Netgear FR314 Firewall/Gateway/Hub

One item noticed in testing - after pinging the gateway and Win machines and then doing an 'arp -a' the hardware addresses of the gateway and win machines are returned.

Another item - I had to rebuild the system after having problems with the IDE drives and multiple cpu's. That is all going well now but the nic cards worked with the first version when booted in the 'safe' mode. I tried that with this build but didn't make any difference.

I REALLY, REALLY need to get this up and working soon.

Rod

SMP could be part of the issue, but shouldn't be.

You most likely have APIC mode enabled... if you can go into your bios and set the interrupt mode to "PIC", and save the change.

At the Grub boot screen pick the normal mode but edit the param line at the bottom of the screen. Insert this in the param line "apic=off". The safe 'mode' may have apic=off in that param line. I can't tell at the moment because I'm in the process of installing Lycoris.

Is it safe to assume you are on cable modem or DSL modem?

Are you using static IP settings or running dhcp client or dhcp server?

What happens when pinging from windows box to suse box? Are you getting destination host unreachable?

Next try these:
- reboot your firewall/router/switch netgear box
- use static IP on the suse box and disable dhcp server on the netgear box.
- reseat nic in slot or into another slot
- swapping cat -5 cable for another
- swap port of the linux box with one of the windows boxes at the switch
- try cross-connect cable between linux box and a windows box

Run the following commands and post the output with your reply:
* lspci
* lspcidrake (this is a mandrake specific tool, but there may be a suse equiv in "/sbin", "/bin", "/usr/bin", "/usr/sbin".

* cat /etc/modules.conf
* lsmod
* cat /etc/resolv.conf
* cat /etc/sysconfig/network
* cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
* route -n
* ifconfig -a
* chkconfig --list network
* rpm -q dhcpcd

If you like I can copy my lengthy message thread from the Mandrake Expert website for you to exam. Many of the things I learned from that experience I put in my last post. You wont be able to access the mdk expert site without account.

Is this your suse box?

Also try posting your question at several sites to get additional eyes on the problem.

Finally got the machine to ping the gateway - the suggestion of adding the "acpi=off" did it. THANKS SOOOOOOO MUCH FOR ALL THE HELP.

Now one question - what do i need to change to modify the boot process so that this option is part of the standard boot process? And by the way - what is the 'acpi' stuff?

Rod

Great news. From what I observed, I believe "APIC" allows for more than the old standard 16

hardware interrupts. This is an Intel spec. When I had Win XP Pro installed on my linux

box, my embedded 10/100 NIC grabbed IRQ=20. I made a mental note of it but brushed it off

since it was working.

However, when I removed XP and installed SuSE, Mandrake, and RedHat I ran into problems and

that is when I started to re-examine everything (bios, cables, settings, router, etc.)

because I came across the same "destination host unreachable problem".

I'm running bleeding edge hardware (ASUS P4PE with 845PE chipset) so you see why my original

post was so long. I spent about 5 days trying to get SuSE & Mandrake working. I'm glad to

see that I may have shortened your troubleshooting time to about 1.5 days.

Now to answer you question...

If you are using the grub boot loader then this should work...
In the /boot/grub folder there should be a file called 'menu.lst'. You will need to edit

this file. Before you edit it make sure you make a backup, and make sure you have a boot

floppy disk handy. The contents of the file should look something like this:

title linux
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda1 devfs=mount hdd=ide-scsi quiet vga=788
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img

The line with the kernel params (kernel = /boot/vmlinuz) should get the 'apic=off' param

added to it. Save it, reboot and test.

HTH. By the way what are your goals with Linux? I'm setting up file/print/intranet services to start with.