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Old 09-22-2002, 03:34 AM   #1
classWizard
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Question setting up internet connection


I just bought a Wal-Mart machine with Mandrake 8.2 Linux preinstalled a couple of weeks ago-- my first experience with Linux. I need help setting up an internet connection. I live in a rural setting and I just got wireless broadband internet access two days ago. Basically this consists of a tower 7 miles away sending a signal to an antenna on my roof. I'm able to download about 375 kbps and upload about 56 kbps. The provider uses a PPPoE broadband connection. I installed a ethernet card in my Windows XP machine (which I'm using now) and got the connection working--it took awhile. I'd eventually like to get three machines sharing the broadband connection over a network: the Win XP machine, the Linux machine, and a Win 98 machine. Right now I'd settle for just getting the Linux machine to work with the provider's modem-- which is on my roof in close proximity to the antenna. Earlier tonight I unplugged the ethernet cable from the XP box and plugged in the Linux box, logged in as root, and tried to set up the internet connection. No luck. For one thing, DrakConf never offered a PPPoE option. The provider doesn't support Linux-- so I'm on my own. Win XP was able to do the setup without any special proprietary drivers from the provider. I'd really appreciate any advice you can give me.
BTW the ethernet port is on the Linux system's motherboard and, yes, it is enabled in SETUP. When the Linux machine boots, after Linux starts to load, it pauses for a long time in the boot process and then finally says in red letters that the eth 0 device (something like that) failed and then continues on with the bootup.
Thanks again for any suggestions.
 
Old 09-23-2002, 03:17 AM   #2
bripage
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I have my nix box behind a router that does the PPPoE connection automatically. There is a way to have your XP machine act as a router and have it do dns for your nix and or other machines. Youll need a hub (yuck) or switch. If you do it this way... all you have to do is set up the NIC on the nix box to automatically dhcpcd everytime it starts up, thus getting an address from the XP box that is doing the PPPoE loggin for you.
 
Old 09-23-2002, 06:47 AM   #3
jburford
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As a newbie over the last year or so, this doesn't sound very easy -if you get no luck here, try posting in the hardware forum, but you may be a newbie swimmer diving into a deep pool.

The XP solution is almost certainly the easiest, as your provider will happily help with Windows, but LINUX is a much more elegant solution for routing and firewalls (and this is a 'NIX forum!). Persevere and best wishes!!!

Jim
 
Old 09-23-2002, 01:52 PM   #4
finegan
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The easiest utility for getting a PPPoe connection under Linux is typically the roaring penguin. With that, another NIC and a hub you can get the Linux box (or the XP machine, ick), to run NAT for the house, or just buy your way around the headache and pick up one of those broadband/DSL routers for about $80. Regardless of the connection type, its just another PPPoe line through ethernet so it'll work.

Cheers,

Finegan
 
Old 09-23-2002, 10:49 PM   #5
classWizard
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Thanks for the replies everbody. I'm starting to realize how far down on the learning curve I am. Before this thread dies out maybe someone could answer a few questions.

If I get a router, do I just connect the Linux box using DHCP? I guess that means the router would have to handle the PPPoE for the WAN connection. Do most routers support PPPoE? I was thinking about getting a D-Link router that supports XP.

I've seen alot of references to Roaring Penguin PPPoE on the internet, but I've also read that the later versions of Linux support PPPoE. Do I need Roaring Penguin for PPPoE on my Mandrake 8.2 Linux? I'm mostly just curious about this for a few months down the road-- because I'm probably going to get the router for right now.

I logged in as su and checked out this program called netconfig-- is this where I could set up a DHCP connection to the router? I think I might have liked that program better than the drakconf.

Thanks,
cW
 
Old 09-24-2002, 06:17 AM   #6
jburford
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I can't help you with your most recent post, but that is because I am also very inexperienced. Hoever, I can give advice based on dissimilar problems I have solved:

persevere
don't ask questions you could resolve with your own investigation (ie work it out yourself without stuffing things up)
ask questions that experienced users can answer briefly and easily
persevere some more

I have found the patience and assistance provided, is beyond price (you can't buy the sort of support you get in LINUX forums), so long as you are not lazy and don't expect someone else to do the work. And you get to feel the achievement is yours if you have done it with a bit of advice and a lot of your own efforts.

Jim
 
Old 09-24-2002, 06:32 AM   #7
finegan
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Yeah, all of the router-in-a-box deal who-hos support pppoe and can either hand out dhcp leases to clients or static IPs, whatever. DHCP is about the world's most generic method of handing out an IP address, everything supports that, I think Windows 3.11 could.

The Linux kernel has been able to do pppoe for a long time, the Roaring Penguin has become just about the most generic pppoe configuration utility around, so you've probably been reading about it, just not by name. Heck, DrakConf, if it has a pppoe setting utility, is probably using RP.

Just remember, its very easy to fix whatever you break.

Luck,

Finegan
 
Old 09-24-2002, 07:22 AM   #8
Amerist
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Quote:
Originally posted by classWizard
Thanks for the replies everbody. I'm starting to realize how far down on the learning curve I am. Before this thread dies out maybe someone could answer a few questions.

If I get a router, do I just connect the Linux box using DHCP? I guess that means the router would have to handle the PPPoE for the WAN connection. Do most routers support PPPoE? I was thinking about getting a D-Link router that supports XP.
I was using T-online (German DSL) which requires PPPOE to log in. My Zyxel Prestige 314 DSL Router/Switch did a wonderful job of automatically establishing a PPPOE connection when one was needed (took only 2.5 seconds) and then disconnected the DSL when there were no outbound requests for 15 minutes (a configured setting). It acts as a DHCP server and automatically assigns IP addresses within a certain (configurable) range. So, then all you had to do was tell XP and Linux to receive an IP address from the DHCP server.

If you're considering getting a router take care to check out the reviews, especially the owner comments. My Parents have a Belkin DSL/cable router and it's not allowing file transfers or voice communications with MSN messenger. If you do that sort of thing with your XP machines, you should really look into whether people have had problems with certain routers.
 
Old 09-26-2002, 12:17 AM   #9
classWizard
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Thanks everybody for the replies to my post.
-cW
 
Old 09-26-2002, 02:23 AM   #10
tincat2
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some things to look at(taken from experience, not expertise-and i must say that i don't know if mandrake will benefit from a slack perspective);
did you lsmod to see if the nic module is loaded-i listened to a fair bit of silence from an enabled sound card until i checked to see if the mod was on board. i would think though, that w/onboard ethernet mandrake would have built the driver into the kernel-but maybe not or if it can be disabled you can get an ethernet card and configure and use it instead of the onboard-which brings me to have you configured eth0 for a static or dynamic address assignment-don't know which you might have.
did you ifconfig eth0, the man ifconfig pages will help with that, you can bring up the interface setting the address of your machine and then you can ping it to check performance-if all that works, it seems that roaring penguin pppoe(downloadable and easy install) would do the rest.
i may have confused things here, but you may get a new start out of it-i got interested in the thread because the tower thing sounds similar to a satelite hookup,which seems the way to go when you're always on the go.
hang in there and good luck.
 
Old 09-26-2002, 03:33 PM   #11
Amerist
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tincat2, that was way over my head, please re-iterate. Remember, periods are our friends. ;-)
 
Old 09-27-2002, 05:09 AM   #12
tincat2
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sorry for the lack of clarity in my previous post. typically, i have one hand free to type, so i skip the uppercase and seem to differentiate the - key more readily than the . , pair at the bottom of the keyboard. it's not a style statement, just a convenience.
my thoughts on the broadband problem posed by classWizard were that since
windows is handling things, a usable signal must be arriving at the box, that is, at the point of insertion of the ethernet cable into the ethernet port on the machine. the next point of inquiry, to my mind, would be the functioning of the ethernet hardware designated as /dev/eth0. i would execute the lsmod command first to see if an ethernet interface module is loaded, though i don't know if that would be of much use since i don't know much about the kernel and less about a mandrake kernel configured to a built-in ethernet motherboard. to discover the status of eth0, you can use ifconfig, the implementation of which is discussed in the man page(man ifconfig). with ifconfig, you can activate the interface and assign an address to your machine. you can then ping(man ping) the machine to see how things are working. if things are go at this point, i would either bring up the pppoe client which is probably already on mandrake or i would download rp-pppoe-3.5(i think) and install it as it seems to do a good job at its task. the other thing i would check is to make sure i had configured my connection properly for static or dynamic address handling, depending on the provider. Finegan has already pointed much of this out. i think most situations are dynamic, but the tower business might be different; classWizard probably knows from his windows setup. finally, i might try putting in a ethernet card(an nic) and loading a module for it after disabling the onboard ethernet, then doing the ifconfig, etc.
i don't know if any of this is useful, but it has worked for me and it was cheap. i'm a fan of mandrake, but one of the reasons i didn't stay long with it was that harddrake and drakconf, or whatever, would rarely do what i wanted to do.

Last edited by tincat2; 09-27-2002 at 05:29 AM.
 
Old 09-28-2002, 05:22 AM   #13
Amerist
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That was helpful. Thanks. I understand what you're saying now. I haven't had experience setting up my linux machine for internet connection over a router, but I can set it up easily with PPPOE if I connect directly to the modem.
 
  


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