Newbie Cannot Connect to Internet (Can't get an IP address)
 

Thanks in advance for all your help.

I am a complete newbie, and I've only really begun to get into Linux this past week. I had an old box that was just sitting in a closet taking up space, so I intstalled Fedora Core 3 onto it. Installation went wonderfully, but I know that I'll be stuck if I can't get online, so that was the first thing I attempted. I went to the Network Configuration page (Applications => System Settings => Network) and there was presented with an already present, but inactive, ethernet connection. When I tried to activate it, a dialogue box opened which stated "Determining IP information for eth0..." After about 3 minutes, it comes back and adds that the operation failed. We have DSL at home, so I wasn't sure whether to use the ethernet or DSL option. When I did try to confgure the DSL option, i was given this error:

/sbin/adsl-start: line 215: 3988 Terminated
$Connect "$@" >/dev/null 2>&1

Really, that's is just a bunch of code to me, of which I cannot make heads nor tails. Help please!

My box is a Dell Dimension 8100
1296 MHz Processor
256 MB RAM
3Com Corporation 3c905-TX/TX-M [Tornado] integrated ethernet card


We're running everything through a Linksys wireless-G broadband router (WRT54G), by using the ethernet plugs in the back. Also, we use Verizon to provide the DSL service, so I think everything is DHCP.

My questions then are:

Should I configure for an ethernet or a DSL connection?

How do I do that successfully?

By the way, I do have internet access on an XP box sitting right next to the Fedora box. Thanks again for your help.

thinkdeeper777

Hello!

When you have DHCP you don't have to configure DSL. If you do, you'll get the same error. Try configuring eth0 for DHCP ;)

I have to power cycle the Linksys routers sometimes to get them to work. Leave DHCP set up on the router starting at say 200, and use static IP's for your network (makes sharing a little easier). Also check the "ifcfg-eth0" file to make sure all settings are right.

Hi, I'm having the same problem, I have a 3com dsl modem wireless router, my laptop works fine (wireless) so does my imac (ethernet) the pc works fine when booted as win98 but when suse9.1 I cant conect to the internet. The router is loged on all the time so trying to use kinternet just causes errors. All I want to know is how to conect to the internet via a LAN yet nowhere can I find this basic bit of info.

SuSE installs a firewall by default. Have you configured that in YAST to allow kinternet or eth0 to connect to the router?

I will say, though-- the reason that you likely can't find the information is because the vast majority of times it "just works", so no one needs to write down what to do when it doesn't.

But if I was you, I'd be in YAST checking my network settings-- maybe you're not connected to the network for some reason, or your ethernet card isn't working. Because if the card were working, and you were thus connected to the network (and therefore the router), it would "just work", and the fact that it doesn't suggests that something in your basic setup is messed up.

Found one address conflict in network setup which I fixed and now using the ip address I can now log-on to the router admin so I guess the network card works. I temporarily turned off both firewalls but still I get unknown host when I try to smurff

Did you set your hostname? Or is the router supposed to do that for you (the default network setting in most network config tools under Linux is that the router gives you a hostname along with the IP. No idea why)? If so, does the router know about this (is it expecting to give you a hostname, because you're on a domain or something)? If not, turn that setting off, give yourself a hostname (name the computer), if you haven't, and check YAST or edit /etc/hosts manually to associate your IP address with the hostname of your computer.

That should solve the host being 'unknown'.

Thanks to all, finally figured out that the manual gave me a bum steer. It says if you have a valid internet connection bind gets you connected to a dns server- wrong (at least in my case) it should have said "valid dial up connection". As I was able to communicate with ip addresses I figured I had to install a dns server, this I did and now all works fine.