For about the past... year. I've been trying to use other distros to do some very simple routing. Take what comes in my wireless card and shoot it out through my onboard or PCI NIC. The only distro this has EVER worked in was Mandrake Community 10.0 (or 10.1 I can't remember) that distro is plenty old and I like to keep my things current. Mandriva has a similar configuring interface but like all the other distros I've tried, it either hates my VIA Rhine II (onboard) or just refuses to activate the interface altogether.
Right now I'm back to Slackware 11.0.
These the specs:
Sweet Compaq Presario SR1030NX
Mobo: VIA
Proc: AMD Athlon XP 3000+
RAM: 1 gig
# of NICS: 3 (2 wired, 1 wireless)
UI: KDE 3.5.4 with gnome dependencies for firestarter
outputs of the important stuff:
Code:
eth0: VIA VT6102 Rhine-II at 0xcc00, 00:0e:a6:b4:1a:a3, IRQ 10.
eth0: MII PHY found at address 1, status 0x7849 advertising 01e1 Link 0000.
eth1: RealTek RTL8139 at 0xf9103000, 00:30:bd:6d:fe:9a, IRQ 5
eth1: Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8100B/8139D'
hermes.c: 4 Dec 2002 David Gibson <hermes@gibson.dropbear.id.au>
orinoco.c
eth2: Station identity 001f:0006:0001:0003
eth2: Looks like an Intersil firmware version 1.3.6
eth2: Ad-hoc demo mode supported
eth2: IEEE standard IBSS ad-hoc mode supported
eth2: WEP supported, 104-bit key
eth2: MAC address 00:05:5D:F9:D2:D0
eth2: Station name "Prism I"
eth2: ready
Hooray, it properly
detects everything, but it ends up meaning a whole lotta nothing.
Using KDE's Control center it tells me that I have one active interface (the wireless), one Disabled, non-dhcp connection, and one Disabled with dhcp enabled. Clicking the "Enable" button would be too easy, the moment you click on it "attempts" to activate, fails miserably and tells me "There was an error changing the device's state. You will have to do it manually." For both disabled devices.
I figure, well, maybe I should check "Activate when computer starts" in the Configure section, of course the moment you hit apply it changes back to the way it was, ignoring my commands completely. No matter what options you change, it ignores them, blanks the fields and goes back to default nothingness. I have seen this across about 3 or 4 distros, all debian distros hate my Via Rhine (including not detecting it at all or not activating it).
I seriously don't feel like using some inferior distro with limited potential and workability (in my opinion) just to do something this simple.
I tried to give as much info as I possibly can, if anything else is needed please let me know, I've been trying to fix this one forever.
Cheers,
Michael
