Network setup issue (should be simple enough)

trickedoutwizard · n00b Joined: 15 Mar 2006 Posts: 2

It's my first time installing Gentoo, and I decided to go with the live cd install (2006.0). Anyways, I cannot seem to get the network working in the gentoo setup. I'm on a college campus, and the network is dhcp, ifconfig returns these results:
eth0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr etc....

eth1 Link encap: Ethernet
inet addr:129.1.240.90 Bcast:129.1.241.255 Mask:255.255.254.0
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU: 1500 METRIC:1
RX packets:8470 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:40 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes 1012320 TX Bytes:5740
Interrupt: 19 Memory:fa000000-0

I'm running on a self built system, Intel Pentium 4 2.4C, Abit IS7, integrated Ethernet (I believe it's a 3com marvel, i was told to try mod probing the sk98 drivers... not really even sure if that's important) Anyways... It seems like gentoo see's the card and has a working driver, but whever I ping something it just returns "unknown host www.yahoo.com". Under windows, in order to get the network working I just set everything to auto detect and it works. Tell me if you need more information than this and any help would be greatly appreciated.

fangorn · Veteran Joined: 31 Jul 2004 Posts: 1886

If you are in a network with DHCP, you almost certainly will have to provide a gateway, which sends your packages to the outside world. This is adressed as "default route" in the network config IIRC. dont know if this gets set by DHCP automatically, never used it :roll:

You also need a /etc/resolv.conf which tells the network where to lookup IP adresses from the names you type in. In there has to be at least the IP adress of the DNS of your network OR the IP adress of a official DNS in the internet (search for "Domain Name server" and you will find the IP adresses of some free ones (mostly of ISPs))
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Sven Vermeulen · Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 8:07 am Post subject:

I have written a nice chapter in the Gentoo Handbook. In a draft Handbook that I'm (slowly) developing I've rewritten that chapter into one that includes problem solving at the end.
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infoball · n00b Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 6

I think that eth0 represents the firewire port, it seems to show up as an alternative network port when booting from the install cd.

Just something to try that may or may not work: Turn off your computer and remove the power cable for a while (at least 10 seconds), When you next start up it may work.

Why? I have no idea what the problem is but it seems that if you have booted Windows, some drivers do something to the network chipset that causes it to not work under Linux (or other OS...) unless you fully powercycle it. :roll:

I have had similar problems with one pcmcia card and with my current computer with onboard ethernet. In the latter case I use an nvidia 430-based MB and the opensource forcedeth driver and I have read that the (binary) driver from nvidia does not suffer from this problem so if that is correct you might get around having to power off before booting Gentoo if there is a vendor-provided driver - not that I recommend it, but for the sake of convenience perhaps...?

Disclaimer: this works for me, and I obviously have completely different hardware from you so take this tip for what it is. It may be completely useless to you.
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fangorn · Veteran Joined: 31 Jul 2004 Posts: 1886

I had this issue with one machine. Pinpointed it to the bios not properly initializing the onboard nic at warm start (Never had any products from Redmond on that baby :wink:

)
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trickedoutwizard · n00b Joined: 15 Mar 2006 Posts: 2

just wanted to let you guys know the suggestions worked, got my internet working and installed gentoo (after a few problems, accidently messed up fstab and had to figure out how to edit the read only file system) anyways, right now it's in the process of emerging gnome... I'm not really sure how long that should take, 1 hour, 3 hours? who knows. Thanks for the help (btw, the problem was just disconnecting the power, letting it restart, worked like a charm, think my firewire card messed with it)