I am very new to linux.

Installed Gentoo 2006 amd, and I cant get online.

It worked when I go onto livecd but not after I installed gentoo on the hard drive.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

its an ethernet cable connection

What happens when you do as root;
dhcpcd eth0
also if you could post;
ifconfig
and
ifconfig -a
also may help
cat /etc/resolv.conf
and
route -n

Check out your /etc/conf.d/net file to make sure it uses whatever programs are in your installation (for example pumpd vs. dhcpcd and iproute2 vs. ifconfig).

ok I tried dhcpcd and it said "bash:dhcpcd:command not found"

for cat/etc/resolv.conf it said no such files or directory

if config -a, and route -n went through but still no connection


when i tried to view /etc/conf.d/net it told me that I did not have permission to do so which i thought was odd cause I was logged as root.

Hope u guys have more suggestions and thanks for the speedy responses and interest.

sounds like you were not logged in as root..weird..

another thing to check is the /etc/resolv.conf and make sure your dns names are right. I had to manually add them for comcast..

I havent even made a new user cause i havent figured out how to.

Its very frustrating to go through all the trouble of setting up dual boot and the OS and not being able to get a basic thing like internet.

Isnt Linux supposed to automatically get all drivers necessary for my machine?

I mean when i download windows i have to install ethernet drivers from the CD would I be able to do something similar for gentoo? Or is that not even the underlying problem?

I was actually thinking that maybe just trying another more mainstream distro might automatically solve the problem what do u guys think?

linux is very dependant on the user configuring the system..Some drivers needed by machine will not be installed until you compile your kernel with them.. and some may be installed, but you have to load the modules before they will work.

Gentoo is a good distro to learn with..mostly because it is really dependant on the user more than some of the other distros..

bremen could you tell me more about dns...i.e. what it is, how do i find out what mine are, and how to replace those. By the way i didnt have a resolv.conf....but i did have an etc file called net help and a regular one called net, am i on the right track?

If you don't know your dns servers you can go to portforward.com/networking/dns.htm to view a list
did you double check the installation docs for gentoo to make sure you didn't miss anything

i think you're right, i probably made a mistake during installation the first time around. So I'm going to re-install it tomorrow. Obviously I'm using the graphic install, i dont know if you're familiar with it. But in the begining it gives you three network choices:
1. My network is already setup and running(or no network)
2. DHCP
3. or Static and this already has a bunch of addresses in it.

there's also one called proxies but I dont think thats the route I want. I think this is where I went wrong with the first installation which one should I go for?

It depends on how you connect to the internet. Usually, a cable ISP uses DHCP to assign network addresses. If you have a router in-between your computer and your modem, it most likely wants to use DHCP as well (though you'll get a private address).

The DHCP server should tell your computer everything it needs to know (e.g., ip address, subnet, broadcast address, dns servers, etc.). If your ISP doesn't use DHCP, you'll have to look at your bill or statement to figure out how it wants to you to connect.

I'd like to thank everyone who helped me.

I have solved the problem by deleting gentoo off my hard drive and installing ubuntu. installed in a quarter of the time, everything worked fine...not to mention it looks a whole lot better. I was damn near chanting ubuntu by the time I was finished installing.