Hi. I'm a Linux novice, having only used "Live" Linux CD's before. I've just installed Mandriva LE 2005 on an old PC (K62-350) and cannot access the internet. I've tried a couple of network cards, old and brand new, but the new one prevented the PC from booting, so I've stuck with an old VIA VT86C926 card. The control panel is reporting it as a VT82C926 card, which is obviously close, but not identical. I'm not sure if this is the cause of the problem, but any attempt to log onto the net is met with www etc could not be found, please check the name and try again.

The PC is connected by Cat5E to a Linksys Router.The connection has been tested on other (Windows) PC's and is working fine. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance,

Alan (impressed but confused newbie!!)

How did you configure your setup? Madriva has sereral helpful things in MCC to configure your hardware. Harddrake will show you the card, it looks like from what you posted, it sees it. My guess is that the card and driver are O.K.

Is the router acting as a DHCP server? ( giving out IP addresses )? You can find out if your machine has an IP address y typeing at a command prompt '/sbin/ifconfig' (without the quotes). Here is a sample of what you should see.

ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 000:B7:26:B3:78
inet addr:192.168.1.13 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::2d0:b7ff:fe26:b378/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:27678 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:25482 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:33242496 (31.7 Mb) TX bytes:2064304 (1.9 Mb)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x1000

Note the field inet addr: it will show your IP address if you have received one or if you have configured one. Your mask must also match the rest of the machines on your network.

You may need to configure DNS. Once again at a command prompt type '/etc/resolv.conf' (without the quotes). This will display the DNS servers you have configured. You can look at one of your windows boxes that is working to get the correct IP addresses for the servers, or ask your ISP. That file you can edit as root, if the IP's of the DNS are not there.

Thanks Cliff, We're up & running!