Help me with Mandrake 9.1 network settings

Factual Questions
1

So I installed Mandrake Linux as a dual boot on my box and everything went swimmingly until I tried to connect to my home network. I can’t even ping my router, much less connect to the internet. Since I’m new to linux I used the drakconnect utility to attempt to set everything up. It recognized my network card, and I clicked the “dhcp” button and followed the instructions, but no connection. I tried assigning an ip address and using the router’s address as the gate, but that didn’t work either.

Setup:
soyo kt333 motherboard with onboard VIA lan
D-link I-604 router
static ip through ethernet ADSL modem

So linux dopers, can you get me online?

2

What do you see when you type the following at a command prompt:

ifconfig eth0

3

What do you see when you type the following at a command prompt:

ifconfig eth0

4

Please don’t be upset with me, but make sure your cable is connected at both ends and the router is turned on. Seriously. I’m still trying to forget I made that mistake.

You say it is a static IP address through the ADSL modem, and that you manually assigned the address. Was the netmask correct? Hopefully, it was a class C. Also, did you remember to configure the interface “up”?

ifconfig eth0 inet xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx netmask xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx up

route add default gw xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Assuming class C network using 192.168.101.0:

ifconfig eth0 inet 192.168.101.100 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

route add default gw 192.168.101.1 (probably. This is a guess, but gateways are, by convention, the .1 address)

5

As the root user.

If you just want to see the output of ifconfig, as your normal user self you have to use the full path: % /sbin/ifconfig eth0

If ifconfig doesn’t work, I’d boot on the windows side, copy down the network settings and see if anything is strange (different IP than you thought, not a class C network, etc…)

6

sigh Yes, I know people do this. I did it myself when I first built the aforementioned home network. But I have a hard time believing that this is the problem when I can reboot my box into Windows to post my Linux problem to SDMB.

As for the rest, yes, the interface is “up”. Also, what I originally did was ask it to obtain an ip address automatically and only when that didn’t work did I try to assign one manually. My router’s address is 192.168.0.1 and the address I tried to assign was 192.168.0.100 (which is the address usually assigned to my box when I login to windows). netmask 255.255.255.0 etc.

I got this:

eth0 Link encap: Ethernet Hwaddr 00:50:26:06:0A:B4
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 METRIC:I
Rx packets:0 errors:0 dropped: 284 overruns:0 frame:0
Tx packets:0 errors:1 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 carrier:0 collisions: 0 txqueuelen: 100
Rx bytes: 0 (0.0 b) Tx bytes: 0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt: 16 Baseaddress: 0xe800

eheheheh…could somebody explain to me what that means exactly?

A friend also suggested adding my computer’s name to hosts.allow but that had no effect.

7

I hear ya , I just got mandrake back online tonight ,after having a disagreement with the router and going through drakconfig more times than I care to remember.

The way I set mine up , which is sharing the network with about 5 or so other computers is to set the address manually , so your gateway is gonna be 192.168.0.1, and your ip address is going to be xxx.xxx.xx.100.

One thing to check out , is to make sure your router and your ip address are the same , mine was xxx.xxx.x.50 on the puter and xxx.xxx.x.2 on the router , hence the argument.

Declan

8

I had the same problem when I installed 9.1.

Here is what I had to do. Unlike Mandrake 8.2 and earlier, for some reason 9.1 doesn’t always automatically install and configure your network all the way during install on every computer.

Try reinstalling Mandrake 9.1 again. This time during install when the summary page loads (after installing packages), be sure to click on the “configure” button to the right of network settings. Follow the instructions and be sure to use the auto/DHCP if you have a broadband connection. Don’t worry about a host name unless your ISP gave you any specific information. Reboot and lemme know if that worked.

It’s really a good idea to do this for all of the summary options because 9.1 plug and play doesn’t always get it right.
One more thing, if you are installing this on a newish laptop, be sure to disable PCMCIA before booting. Linux doesn’t have fully supported drivers for it.

9

I already tried this. :slight_smile: No luck. I may yet try it again if I get desperate enough.

Well, this did something. Now when I try to ping the router instead of “connect: Network unreachable” it tries the ping but returns “Destination host unreachable”. Mmm…100% packet loss…

I don’t understand what you mean by this. Could you clarify?
Thanks for the help so far folks. Maybe Mandrake just hates me. :smiley:

10

Odd. Mandrake has always been error-free on installs for me.

When you posted the results of ifconfig, it showed the MAC address for your card, that the card was active and that, really, nothing else had been done to it. No IP address, netmask or broadcast address had been assigned.

As root:

ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.100 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

route add default gw 192.168.0.1

Now, do an ifconfig eth0 again. You should see the IP address (192.168.0.100) assigned, netmask and broadcast (192.168.0.255). These will be on the first or second lines of the output. something like this:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:76:1B:0B:8D
inet addr:192.168.0.104 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:4031 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:4410 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:3031766 (2.8 Mb) TX bytes:686668 (670.5 Kb)
Interrupt:23 Base address:0xb800

Next is the default route.

netstat -rn should show your routing table:

Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface
192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

arp -a shows your arp table. Mine has one entry: the router

? (192.168.0.1) at 00:40:05:BF:C5:1D [ether] on eth0
The destination of 0.0.0.0 is the default route line. If no 0.0.0.0 network appears in the output, re-run the route command:

route add default gw 192.168.0.1

If the default route is there, then something is goofy. In the example above, you can see that it has assigned the 192.168.0 subnet to eth0. Is this the same on your computer? Is eth0 being used. I had a brief problem once where, for some reason, eth0:9 was being used and I have no idea where that came from.

While we are on the subject, does ifconfig -a (show all addresses) show other interfaces? I get eth0 and lo0 (loopback). Are you seeing any others.

Sorry to go on for so long. Just a couple more things to troubleshoot:

  1. Ping your eth0 card (# ping 192.168.0.100). I’m sure you will get responses, but you have to start somewhere.
  2. Ping the broadcast address (# ping 192.168.0.255). Again, you should get a response.
  3. Ping the router (# ping 192.168.0.1). This is where you were failing before.
  4. If you have another host on the network, ping it.
  5. Trace the route (# traceroute 192.168.0.1) Is it trying to go somewhere is shouldn’t. It should go directly to your router. Is it trying to go through an intermediate?

From what you described, though, it sounds like a routing issue that should be visible in the output of netstat -rn.

You don’t have two entities using the same IP address do you? That would mess things up.

I’ll stop now.

11

Now we’re cooking with charcoal!

My routing table looks just like yours, except that it has an extra line:
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface
192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
0.0.0.0 192.168.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

ifconfig -a also shows just what you have, except for an additional entry for “eth0:9” which has inet: 169.254.0.0

What the hell kind of ip address is that?

12

now that the problem is identified, would somebody mind telling me how to fix it?

13

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Sonyadora *
I already tried this. :slight_smile: No luck. I may yet try it again if I get desperate enough.

[QUOTE]

Ya that was plan A , when the internet failed to come online , just do a fresh install and voila , the net will be back up. Nope , did not happen.

[QUOTE]
** don’t understand what you mean by this. Could you clarify?**

[QUOTE]

My original problem was that when an Xbox was booted up for that online gaming stuff , It would boot my computer off the net, as it used my IP address as its default.

So I manually changed the settings in the TCP/IP in WinXP and changed it from xxx.xxx.0.4 to xxx.xxx.0.100. The connection worked great ,and am surfing the net. I switch back over to mandy and am pulling my hair out cause no network.

Plan A was already described ,as no matter cable or dsl , mandrake always auto configed the settings at install time. Not this time. What i did do ,when the intranet showed up , was to go into the router settings and lo and behold , while my computer’s ip address was set to xxx.xxx.0.100 , the address for my computer on the router was xxx.xxx.0.2. Once that was changed , the net came back up perfectly.

Mandy does not hate you, lol and no problem with the help :slight_smile:

Declan

14

Please can someone help me, I still haven’t gotten it worked out?

15

You’re not going to like this, Sonyadora, but when I had the eth0:9 problem, it went away on it’s own.

I was using the network connection in a hotel. In my room, I got the eth0:9. It even, somehow, survived reboots. But when I tried the network connection in the lobby the next morning, the problem was gone. Different network connection, different result, and I have no idea why.

I was not even able to do an ifdown eth0 followed by manual ifconfig and route commands to configure the interface. Well, I could do it, but I couldn’t talk out eth0.

I just don’t know what that is.

I did find one suggestion on the internet. While booted into Mandrake (or at least not booted into Windows), power cycle your router. When it comes back on line, do an “ifup eth0”.

This shouldn’t work. It shouldn’t matter. But it’s something you haven’t tried yet.

Give it a go. And good luck.

leenmi, borrowing foxymoron’s session.

16

That’s a virtual IP. eth0 is the real IP. As Linux allows you to bind multiple IPs to a network card, this is what you end up.

Try zapping eth0:9 with ifconfig.

17

One thing you should try is pinging localhost 127.0.0.0. If that works, replace your cable and try pinging the gateway.

18

Sonya

Does your D-link have a feature that you can access the router directly through the web browser ?

With my netgear router, all I have to do is hit open, followed by typing 192.168.0.1 and after entering admin , followed by a password , get directly into the router.

Declan

19

Sonya

Does your D-link have a feature that you can access the router directly through the web browser ?

With my netgear router, all I have to do is hit open, followed by typing 192.168.0.1 and after entering admin , followed by a password , get directly into the router.

Declan