Hello,
I just set up a wireless radio (picks up a signal from a 2.4 GHz tower 2 miles away)that is set up as a dhcp router, it connects to my computer with an ethernet cable to eth0. When I first set it up my system discovered the lease, but I lost the connection and for a day and a half of trying (power down/up radio/router, try different settings, reboot ) and googling, and I have not been able to re-establish the connection. All attempts of dhcpdiscover on eth0 have not picked up the lease. I know the radio/router/cables/connections are all OK because I can connect with a windows XP box (I'm using it for this) Now, I can't even get through on my dial-up: even though the connection is established no software is able to use the connection. I have tried several different /etc/network/interfaces revisions and ifconfig shows lo eth0 and ppp are all OK when I bring them up. I know the ip 192.168.100.100, submask 255.255.255.0, default gateway 192.168.100.1, dhcp server 192.168.100.1, and dns 192.168.100.1 . This is discovered in XP, and the one time I got a connection, and in talking with my ISP. My ISP basically said get a router to connect the radio/router to and connect the linux box to the router. I have been using kde's systems settings and also editing the interfaces file manually. I should be able to have:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
address 127.0.0.1
netmask 255.0.0.0

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

I have also tried the static configuration:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.100.100
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.100.1

My resolv.conf is
nameserver 192.168.100.1

(but I don't have resolvconf installed. Is this something?)
I have dhcp3-client installed.
I am new to the networking stuff because we have always been on dial-up so it's likely that I'm missing some minuscule config option. My understanding of it is like a jigsaw puzzle. I'm stumped.

Thanks to anyone who can help me with this!
After more googling could it be an ipv6 issue?

"even though the connection is established no software is able to use the connection."

What error messages do you get when you try to use the connection?

You indicate that this might be a problem with resolv.conf. You can test whether resolv.conf is the problem by entering the two following addresses into your web browser:

http://164.214.2.59
http://www.nima.mil

If you get through on the number address but not on the name address then you do not have resolve.conf set up properly.

"All attempts of dhcpdiscover on eth0 have not picked up the lease."

I gather that you are using DHCP. DHCP sets up your internet connection every time that it starts. If resolve.conf is bad it is likely DHCP is building a bad resolve.conf when it sets up and starts pppd. Check whatever software you use to set up DHCP and see if you omitted the DNS (Domain Name Server) information.

--------------
Steve Stites

Hi Steve,

When trying to connect with any application there is a timeout, so I can't get either a named or numbered address, ppp0 or eth0.

The dhcpdiscover is to 255.255.255.255 but it should be 255.255.255.0 is there any way to get dhcp to use 255.255.255.0 ?

I am confused, with the setup I have the eth0 connection is not using pppd is it? This is becoming quite annoying - after I read your post I disconnected from the XP box, powered down the radio, powered it back up again, rebooted the linux box and saw the lights flashing but nothing but the same log entries with no dhcpoffers received. I unplug the cable put it into the XP box and I'm up in 2 seconds and back to this post. There has to be a solution to this.

Thanks for your help.

Scott.

You aren't getting as far as I thought you were.

DHCP sets up your internet connection every time that it starts. Then it starts either pppd or pppoe, most likely pppd.

Check to see what has or has not setup properly.

Has your wireless card been detected? As root check with:
lspci -v

Does eth0 exist? As root check with:
ifconfig -a

Has eth0 been connected to your card? As root check with:
lsmod | less
and look to see if the correct driver was loaded for your card.

Is dhcp running or did it start up and quietly die when initialization failed? As Check to see by issuing the top command:
top
and then look to see if dhcpd is running. Also check for either pppd or pppoe.

Each distribution comes with its own DHCP setup software. What distribution and what setup program are you using? In any case the 255 setting will be somewhere in your DHCP setup program.


--------------------------
Steve Stites

Hi Steve,
I want to thank you for your help, and I'll put some of the stuff here in case anyone else meets this problem. I went to check all the things you suggested and the high speed came up with no problems, I just made sure I powered down the radio/router before booting. Last night just before bed =1:00am by that point, I had setup the following:

/etc/network/interfaces
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
address 127.0.0.1
netmask 255.0.0.0


auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp


iface ppp0 inet wvdial
provider defaults
------------
resolv.conf
nameserver 192.168.100.1
----------
ipv6 blacklisted in etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
commented out "alias net-pf-10" in /etc/modprobe.d/aliases
----------
Here are the results for lspci -v
Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 PCI Fast Ethernet (rev 90)
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Unknown device 807c
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 185
I/O ports at b000 [size=256]
Memory at e5800000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at 60000000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2

and here is ifconfig -a
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:E0:18:71:88:A8
inet addr:192.168.100.100 Bcast:192.168.100.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:13213 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:9442 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:18412734 (17.5 MiB) TX bytes:631530 (616.7 KiB)
Interrupt:185 Base address:0xb000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:252 (252.0 b) TX bytes:252 (252.0 b)

My DHCP is dhclient3
I am running Kubuntu with a 2.6.17-12 kernel.
No pppd or pppoe running. I haven't tried dial-up again since eth0 is working now.
A very odd situation. Thanks again,
Scott.

I've encountered a similar problem. I'm using a laptop with a Linksys wireless card based on the Marvell chipset. I can get authenticated by my router using wpa_supplicant:

Kwifimanager shows that I'm connected to the network and gives a MAC address, but the local IP address is unavailable. ifup wlan1 produces the following:

I can access the router just fine under Windows, and I was even able to access it with an older version of my Linksys wireless card. It appears that the only problem with the connection is that I can't get the router to issue an IP address.

Any ideas?

I finally discovered why I couldn't get my Linksys WPC54G v5 wireless card to work: the information in /etc/networks/interfaces was wrong. I now have:

I think it was the lack of the dhcp that caused the problem and prevented the acquisition of an IP address from the router.

One mystery remains, though. During bootup, ndiswrapper assigns the wireless card to wlan0 but then almost immediately changes it to wlan1 (or so the output of dmesg indicates). Why is it being changed?