On Mon, 2003-11-24 at 09:55, Trevor Smith wrote: > I have had the same hardware and installed various versions of (red > hat) linux many times over the past years. It has always autodetected > all my hardware and autoconnected to my Internet provider. Originally > my local cable company using DHCP then my local phone company (ADSL) > also using DHCP. At no time did I ever configure any networking, I just > told whatever version of red hat to use DHCP and we were off. > > I hadn't been using linux much but now I'm enrolled in computer science > and wanted to stop using Win2k so thought I'd install a newer version > of everything but suddenly I have no ability to connect to the network. > Again, no hardware has changed -- except I did install 256 meg more > RAM. The ADSL "modem" has remained connected, the nic is the same, > everything is exactly as it was, where it was. Win2k continues to > access my ADSL connection 100% of the time. > > I installed Fedora core 1 and, as usual, the installation was flawless > -- except after install, there is no connection to the DHCP server. At > boot it says 'bringing up eth0...' then a line about failing to get ip > settings or something. Trying to get eth0 to work after boot is > similarly useless. It waits for approx 1 minute each time then says > "failed". > > I have reinstalled 6 or 7 times with different strategies, but no > different results. I tried a SuSE network install, but it also fails to > get any sort of connection (but that may be because I have no idea what > "parameters", if any, are needed for the nic. > > Interestingly, I tried reinstalling Red Hat 7.2 and it did not set up > my nic properly but this is NOT the problem with Fedora and SuSE. BOTH > are identifying my nic properly and fedora, at least, installs the > "proper" driver. The nic is a D-Link but it has always been identified > as a DEC 21x4x based card. I even took the damn thing out to read the > chip numbers to make sure I wasn't remembering it wrong. (And I > *wasn't* remembering wrong.) The DEC 21x4x uses a 'tulip' driver, in older distributions the driver may have been 'de4x5', depending on the age of the card. > So I "rebooted" the "modem" by unplugging it, hoping to get new IP > leases, or whatever. No change. Win2k still works perfectly, linux > still fails to contact anything when first attempting to find the dhcp > server. > > btw, l0 works fine (i can ping 127.0.0.1). You don't even need a network card for 127.0.0.1 to work. > there seems to be no dhcpcd or pump on fedora, but i did find that > dhclient works from the terminal but that has the same results as > attempting to use the graphical interface to "start" eth0. Except with > dhclient I get many lines of output while the minute elapses and before > I get the error saying no DHCP offers were received. Basically it says > it's sending a request, then another, then another, etc. No response, > then it times out. > > btw, Win2k (and OS/2 before it, and various red hats before it) never > wait(ed) any amount of time to get their DHCP IPs. It happens in a few > seconds, not in a minute or more. > > ifconfig shows everything "working. There is an entry for l0 and one > for eth0 with all kinds of info for each, but no IP for eth0 (of > course). I'm going on memory here since this has been an oddysey for 3 > days and the only net connection I have is from win2k. Does the end of the eth0 section show a line indicating the "Interrupt:XX"? If not, set your bios for a "Non-PnP" OS. > I read somewhere there was some bug and "fix" about requiring a > hostname of *any* kind to get eth0 working but I tried that and it > changed nothing. (In fact, the symptoms I read about didn't seem to be > happening on my machine, but I thought I'd try anyway.) > > I saw on my win2k system the IRQ of the network card was 9 but fedora > was trying to say it was 10 so I tried to change it to 9 to see what > would happen but nothing did. I'm not really sure how to change an IRQ. > I just went to the nic entry in some networking tool in the Gnome gui > somewhere and changed the drop down list for the nic's IRQ from > "unknown" to "9" and rebooted. no joy. > > I read some networking howto and got some vague ideas about things to > try but none did anything. > > I know I'm not providing much technical detail here but I can't > remember some and don't know what all would be needed to diagnose > anyway. > > So, summary: > > - the nic is recognized and a driver is installed and it appears to > work. > - the adsl 'modem' works for sure since Win2k continues to connect > - the attempt to find the dhcp server at my phone company and get an ip > address for eth0 fails 100% of the time in linux > > Question: > > where do I look next? What do I try and how do I try it? What > information do I try to extract from those attempts? How do I apply > that information (if acquired) to fix this damn thing? > > Thanks for the patience -- Chris Kloiber Red Hat, Inc.
