Hi. I'm hoping someone can clue me in as to what is going on (I'm new to Linux) when I boot Debian. Is that DHCPDISCOVER sequence normal(it takes a long time) and why am I getting that error for eth0? Haven't detected any difference in how Debian runs.


eth2: unknown hardware address type 801
Mon Jan 4 23:31:35 2010: eth2: unknown hardware address type 801
Mon Jan 4 23:31:35 2010: Listening on LPF/eth1/00:14:22:f8:3d:26
Mon Jan 4 23:31:35 2010: Sending on LPF/eth1/00:14:22:f8:3d:26
Mon Jan 4 23:31:35 2010: Sending on Socket/fallback
Mon Jan 4 23:31:39 2010: DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
Mon Jan 4 23:31:46 2010: DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
Mon Jan 4 23:31:54 2010: DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 10
Mon Jan 4 23:32:04 2010: DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
Mon Jan 4 23:32:12 2010: DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
Mon Jan 4 23:32:23 2010: DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 17
Mon Jan 4 23:32:40 2010: No DHCPOFFERS received.
Mon Jan 4 23:32:40 2010: No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.
Mon Jan 4 23:32:50 2010: Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.1.1
Mon Jan 4 23:32:50 2010: Copyright 2004-2008 Internet Systems Consortium.
Mon Jan 4 23:32:50 2010: All rights reserved.
Mon Jan 4 23:32:50 2010: For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/
Mon Jan 4 23:32:50 2010:
Mon Jan 4 23:32:50 2010: eth2: unknown hardware address type 801
Mon Jan 4 23:32:51 2010: SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
Mon Jan 4 23:32:51 2010: eth0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
Mon Jan 4 23:32:51 2010: eth0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
Mon Jan 4 23:32:52 2010: eth2: unknown hardware address type 801
Mon Jan 4 23:32:52 2010: Bind socket to interface: No such device
Mon Jan 4 23:32:52 2010: Failed to bring up eth0.
Mon Jan 4 23:32:52 2010: done.
Mon Jan 4 23:32:52 2010: Starting portmap daemon....
Mon Jan 4 23:32:52 2010: Starting NFS common utilities: statd.
Mon Jan 4 23:32:53 2010: Setting console screen modes and fonts.


Thanks for any help at all!

Can you post the output from:

ifconfig -a

also

more /etc/network/interfaces

From ifconfig -a:

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:14:22:f8:3d:26
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:18

eth2 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-13-02-C5-A8-35-77-6C-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:28 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:28 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1880 (1.8 KiB) TX bytes:1880 (1.8 KiB)

wlan0_rename Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:13:02:c5:a8:35
inet addr:192.168.0.176 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::213:2ff:fec5:a835/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:3249 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:3098 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:2395175 (2.2 MiB) TX bytes:673345 (657.5 KiB)

__________________________

From more /etc/network/interfaces:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp

auto eth1

iface eth0 inet dhcp



auto eth0

The DHCP Discover just means that your computer is trying to get an IP address from a LAN DHCP server on eth0 (your first Ethernet interface). Debian is just trying to bring networking up before login. Just each distro does things a little different, some will hide this while Debian waits for it. It also appears you have two NICs installed, is that correct?

I think so--would those network adapters be my Intel/PRO Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection and my Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5752 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (or 1394 Network Connection??) What about that error message?

Ok, I can't recall exactly where to locate it, but in the udev rules you will find where debian setup your NICs it looks as though the install detected two NICs creating eth0 and eth2, however, this is odd because it should be eth0, eth1, eth2..... so it looked like it skipped one. Now let's address the devices you have. The Gigabit PCI express is probably one of the eth devices, if you have an on board that is probably another eth device. You wireless card on the otehr hand is unlikely to be an eth device in debian, as debian usually assigns a wlan0, wlan1, etc... naming convention to wireless NICs, my guess is it may not have been loaded. A review of your udev rules should help here as it would list the MAC address associated with each eth device listed, using the mac you can identify which NIC is which eth. Lastly out of the box you will not have an IEEE1394 network connection in linux, unlike in windows most linux distros will not create a network connection for it.

As far as the error message itself, as I said the DHCP discover is not an error, unless you have a DHCP server and a cable plugged into you NIC and it still isn't working. The other message about eth2 is saying it knows there's a device but it is having a problem talking to it, maybe a driver module isn't loaded, or the wrong one is loaded. As far as eth0 it says there is no device, this is where you have to look at udev rules. It will list what eth devices debian has detected. You may have had a third NIC at one time that is no longer there, and eth0 is still around but non existent, I don't know for sure.

You can also try looking and or posting the output of lspci and lsmod that might help us and you see your issue. The first one will detect all devices that debian can see on the PCI bus and what the devices report to it about information. lsmod will show what modules are loaded. Modules are basically like drivers. For instance the i915 module is the driver for the i915 intel chipset, and b43 is a broadcom driver module for certain broadcom wireless (WiFi) cards. And here is some sample output from my lspci it shows my built in ehthernet and the broadcom wireless card in the device list.
lspci -v will provide some more detailed output like below for my wireless card
Well hope this starts to help you.

Scheidel, thanks for your help. Been away from the comp last few days but I'm trying to tackle the issue now, keeping in mind what you've written. I'll let you know how I get along.