Re: Internet Woes

From: lae (lae70_at_whitewatercomputing.com)
Date: 12/21/03 

Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 22:09:02 GMT

Do you have two NICS? Are they integrated, PCI, ISA?

In my hands the Network Configuration Wizard in Mandrake 9.2 Control
Center is about as flakey as snow. It will not, in my hands, write
new profiles. It will not "remember" settings unless you do an exact
sequence of seemingly unnecessary procedures and so on. For some
NICS, a reboot is required to effect a gateway connection and the list
goes on.

To be fair, if you use a common NIC, the Wizard is better behaved but
not without idiosynchrocies that soak up hours of time. So much for
the rant. The price is right and it can be made to work. Plus, many
of my problems are related to motherboard bios and hardware.

I have wrestled for days trying to do it the methodical way and
finally gave up trying to force my preferred hardware into submission.
When all else fails, resort to trial and error by substituting
hardware and slots.

In your case, it looks like you are exposing a Windows box directly to
the Internet. I just had a root kit installed on an exposed Win2K box
that was entirely patched with the latest Microsoft security updates.
While this is not directly related to your problem, I suggest you get
a 4-port router and get your wndows box working on DCHP from the
router. Then, plug your Linux box into the router. This way you can
have your Windows and Linux boxes on the same page at the same time.

In your case, I suggest the following.
  remove both nics and boot into X
  let Drake remove the nic configuration for removed cards
  remove custom profiles that you created
  halt and power down
  install a single NIC - preferrable a common one - intel ether pro
  use autodetection and DHCP when asked to configure the "new" nic
  if autodetection fails to set LAN install - new slot
  See if you have conectivity - most likely not
  Start the Control Center
  Use the hardware list (not networking) to identify the nic
  Run the nic configuration from hardware utility
  Be sure set start at boot or configuration will not be saved
  restart X as advised
  check for connectivity - probably not
  Start Control center Network & Internet Utility
  Is there an address under Lan Configuration? probably not
  Complete each of the 3 configuration buttons
  Click apply, but wait that is not enough
  Click OK to leave Network & Internet utility
  Reenter the Network and Internet Utility
  Was an IP address assigned
  Was there a connection to the gateway?

For me, there was still a problem once both the gateway information
and the address information was correct. Restarting the netwok would
not effect a gateway connection but rebooting the OS worked. Having
to reboot the OS after every network configuration was too time
consuming so I bit the bullet and retired my gigabit card for now.

I am having a world of trouble configuring a simple DMZ on the Linksys
RV082 router. This has forced me to work on the bugs in my Linux box.
  
  
  
  

On 20 Dec 2003 09:59:05 -0800, DarrylSangster@netscape.net (Darryl)
wrote:

>Hello All. I've been having a problem connecting to the internet for
>the last few weeks since I put Mandrake 9.2 on my machine. I
>previously had Mandrake 8.1 and the net worked "out of the box",
>meaning I didn't configure it myself: the install configured it and it
>worked with my DSL. I wiped the partition and put 9.2 on, and it
>hasn't been able to connect to the internet since.
>
>In my Windows 98 box under "winipcfg" it has the following
>information:
>
> IP Address: xx.yy.zz.214
> Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.128
>Default Gateway: xx.yy.xx.129
>
>where "xx", "yy", and "zz" are all different numbers, but the string
>"xx.yy.zz" is the same in the IP address and the Gateway. The net
>works fine on the Windows box.
>
>On the Linux box the Mandrake Control Center, under DrakConnect it has
>the following info:
>
>Hostname: thor
>
>Internet Access:
> Type: lan
> Gateway: xx.yy.zz.129
> Status: Not connected
>
>
>LAN Configuration:
>Interface IP Address Protocol Driver State
>eth0 192.168.0.1 static ne2k-pci up
>eth1 xx.yy.zz.217 dhcp ne2k-pci up
>
>---------------------------------------
>Configure Hostname
>
>Host Name: thor
>Zeroconf Host Name: thor
>DNS Server: xx.yy.aa.138
>Gateway (e.g. ...1) xx.yy.zz.217
>Gateway Device: eth1
>
>This does not connect at all. So I changed eth1 to a static IP and
>entered the same IP that shows up on the Windows box. i.e.
>xx.yy.zz.214. So the line for "eth1" read like this:
>
>eth1 xx.yy.zz.214 static ne2k-pci up
>
>Clicked "apply" and had the same results. Ifconfig eth1 shows the
>correct IP address assigned but it doesn't connect to anything. Pings
>fail to any address including the one assigned to eth1, whether it is
>the address DHCP gets or the static one I assign that is the same as
>the Windows IP that works. They both get 100% packet loss after I
>press <ctrl-c> to stop the pinging.
>
>Here are the contents of some files that hopefully can be of some
>help:
>
>/etc/sysconfig/network
>HOSTNAME=thor
>NETWORKING=yes
>GATEWAY=xx.yy.zz.129
>GATEWAYDEV=eth1
>
>/etc/hosts
>127.0.0.1 localhost
>192.168.0.1 thor
>xx.yy.zz.214 thor
>
>/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1
>IPADDR=xx.yy.zz.214
>NETMASK=255.255.255.0
>NETWORK=xx.yy.zz.128
>BROADCAST=192.168.1.255
>ONBOOT=yes
>MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=yes
>
>/etc/host.conf
>order hosts,bind
>multi on
>nospoof on
>spoofalert on
>
>/etc/resolv.conf
>nameserver aa.bb.cc.dd
>
>This is the output of the 'route' command:
>Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
>xx.yy.zz.128 * 255.255.255.128 U 0 0 0 eth1
>192.168.0.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
>127.0.0.0 * 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
>default xx.yy.zz.129 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth1
>
>Since the Windows box gets the IP ending with "214" I suspect that is
>the correct IP address since it connects successfully to the net. I
>don't know why Mandrake doesn't ever get this thru DHCP, but it
>doesn't.
>
>Note that I previously had Mandrake 6.0 on this box, and the net
>worked fine. At that time I had it configured with a static IP that I
>had to manually change when my IP changed, but it worked fine. Just
>had to do ifdown and ifup when I couldn't connect to the net and it
>would get the correct IP address. I then wiped 6.0 and installed 8.1
>and DHCP worked normally. In fact, I didn't configure it at all: the
>install program in 8.1 set it up correctly and I was able to connect
>to the net immediately without any tinkering by me. Now I wiped 8.1
>and installed 9.2 and it has not worked once. I can't surf, can't ping
>outside addresses, I can't even ping the address DHCP assigns to eth1!
>The ifdown/ifup combination doesn't even seem to get the correct IP
>address now. If anyone has any ideas I'd appreciate it. Thanks.
>
>Darryl