So I decided to try Linux...

Fenster

So I decided to try Linux...

After some friends urged me to try it, I read up on it and after consulting websites, boards and books, I downloaded Suse Linux 9.1, which I gather is the most-idiot proof of all Linux distros.

It installed like a dream, is secure, highly-customizable and I'm finding it great for editing pictures and media work in general.

The catch? No internet.

Now before I go on, I must state I consider myself a seasoned XP user. I know my way in and around the OS, but like most Windows users, I'm like a deer in headlights when it comes to editing and creating scripts and compiling code. I don't doubt that it will come to me in time, but for now I'm afraid to touch anything as I know Linux isn't forgiving if you screw up a critical setting.

Now, down to the gory details. I've Eircom home DSL (512/128) through a Netopia Model 3346 DSL Ethernet router. The problem as near as I can tell is that Suse isn't even detecting the router. I figure that this board is the best place to try for help first as its likely one or more people here would have enountered the same problem.

If anyone can help my newbie self in this matter it would be very much appreciatied.

zoro

I'm gonna make a wild guess and say that you have a motherboard with an nForce2 chipset? If so you can join the club ... we've all had the same problem

Can you give us more information regarding your hardware setup?

MacGyver

it could also be a firewall problem.
i had the same problem with suse 9.0
just configure you firewall and it should work then. sorry i cant fill u in on how to do it as ive changed computer and dont have suse installed.... gonna give gentoo a go on this one

Fenster

My system, as near as I can recall from going through the receipts for the parts:

ASRock P4VT8 motherboard (with its specific drivers installed). Its ethernet is integrated.

nVidia GeForce FX 5900 XT graphics card

Trust 514DX sound card

Seagate 80GB 7200RPM IDE, model st3800 hard drive

1024mb PC2100 DDR RAM

I think that more or less covers the basics.

Oh, and I've the latest firmware installed on the router.

MacGyver

yeah seems to be a firewall problem in suse itself. ill try see if i can find a tutorial but play around with it its more fun that way and you'll learn more... yeah i know learn and fun in the same sentance but its true

Fenster

Well I'm stupid because I can't find it. The nearest I found was Proxy settings under "Privacy and Security"

zoro

In linux, the firewall is called IPTables ... have a look around for that. It's definitely installed, you just have to look harder

Can you have a look at your hardware settings to see if the ethernet card is even picked up??
Try typing "ifconfig -a" and tell us your output of that command

maxheadroom

Fenster, just a thought. You might have better luck posting this on a forum with more SUSE experts who'll know where in YaST the settings you're looking for are. You might also get better responses here if you edit the first post to make the title more like "SUSE 9.1 networking help needed"

Syth

I've had similar problems, with my ethernet. One of the drawbacks of Linux is that if you don't know the command, then you can be totally lost.
If you ever see something like "eth0: No such device" when booting up then it's probably a driver problem. If not it could be a firewall problem.

Have you tried linuxquestions.org?

tomk

As well as ifconfig, post the output of lspci - if we can identify the module required by your NIC, we'd be well on the way.

Also take Syth's suggestion a little further by doing

dmesg | grep eth

and post that here as well. That entry searches through your boot messages for any mention of "eth".

Fenster

First off, thank you to everyone who replied since last night. I was expecting "omfg u dont know that? newb!" more than anything.

Now, in order, sorta:

Syth and maxheadroom: Yeah, I was going to try linuxquestions.org and the Suse support forums today while I have the time. I figured though that if the problem ever cropped up anywhere, it would crop up first on an Irish board.

tomk and zoro: I'll give those commands a try, thank you.

BenH

By default, when suse is installing, it will configure the card identified as eth0 for DHCP, if your directly attached to your cable modem you should be fine, make sure that your router is also handing out dhcp addresses, and it doesnt reserve slots based on mac addr and client name.

IPtables is frontended in suse by SuseFirewall, but by default its set to off so that shouldnt be an issue.

grepping through your boot logs and dmesg will probably give you a whole load of information you dont really need and you may find hard to understand, so try these steps.

Open a terminal and switch to root using the su command.

run ifconfig - this will then display information on the state of your interfaces, beginning with the loopback, and then eth0, eth1 etc.

The devices IP addr should be on the second line.

If there isnt an ip addr there, shut the interface down with the command "ifdown eth0" and then restart it with "ifup eth0".

If this has been configured for DHCP it will then attempt to obtain an ip addr from whatever the dhcp server is on your network, if this times out and is backgrounded then the problem probably doesnt reside with suse.

If that doesnt provide anything useful, before you go searching through the logs you can try one last thing, earlier versions of suse had issues with acpi interfering with the operation of onboard cards. You can disable acpi at boot time by entering "acpi=off" and "pci=noacpi" seperated by a comma in the dialogue box of grub's splash screen.

Good Luck,

Ben

nadir

is eth0 up an running? give us the output of ifconfig in the console. It should show the interfaces eth0 and lo as up.
then try to ping your router, if you cant try to flush the firewall with iptables -F. try to ping the modem again, then all you need to do is set up adsl-setup or whatever suse use. Sometimes with router modems you need to tunnel them, its pretty easy there is a prog called l2tpd , I can give instructions on how to use it, if nothing else works, but I see no reason why you wouldnt be able to get online, nforce chipset or no. If the ethernet card works, you should be ok.

Dar

Can you ping the router? If so you just need to add a default rule to the routing table methinks.

Fenster

I'm trying to save a text log of all that you guys requested to the windows partition (as plain .txt, also tried .html), but its not showing when I switch over. Any tips?

EDIT: I've looked at the outputs myself (and checked in yase) and they seems to be alternately telling me there's no router or that its there, but not in use.

Fenster

Well it took burning them to disc as I suck, but here is the requested info:

ifconfig:

linux:/home/<name> # ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0B:6A:2B:CE: D0
inet6 addr: fe80::20b:6aff:fe2b:ced0/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1530 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:11 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:93957 (91.7 Kb) TX bytes:2852 (2.7 Kb)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0xc000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:208 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:208 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:13664 (13.3 Kb) TX bytes:13664 (13.3 Kb)

ifdown:

eth0 device: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 78)
eth0 configuration: eth-id-00:0b:6a:2b:ce:d0


ifup:

eth0 device: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 78)
eth0 configuration: eth-id-00:0b:6a:2b:ce:d0
ERROR: Error while excuting:
Command 'ip route replace to 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0' returned:
RTNETLINK answers: No such device
Configuration line: 169.254.0.0 - 255.255.0.0 eth0

Boot log:

Due to its length I cropped the parts not associated with networking. Let me know if you need the full log

ERROR: Error while excuting:
Command 'ip route replace to 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0' returned:
RTNETLINK answers: No such device
Configuration line: 169.254.0.0 - 255.255.0.0 eth0

Warning: interface eth0 is not (yet?) active.
Warning: No interface active (yet?)linux:~ # ifup eth0
eth0 device: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 78)
eth0 configuration: eth-id-00:0b:6a:2b:ce:d0Inspecting

Setting up network interfaces:
lo
lo IP address: 127.0.0.1/8
done eth0 device: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 78)
eth0 configuration: eth-id-00:0b:6a:2b:ce:d0
eth0 Error while excuting:
Command 'ip route replace to 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0' returned:
RTNETLINK answers: No such device
Configuration line: 169.254.0.0 - 255.255.0.0 eth0


ERROR: Error while excuting:
Command 'ip route replace to 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0' returned:
RTNETLINK answers: No such device
Configuration line: 169.254.0.0 - 255.255.0.0 eth0

Warning: interface eth0 is not (yet?) active.

Warning: interface eth0 is not (yet?) active.
Warning: No interface active (yet?)linux:~ # ifdown eth0
eth0 device: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 78)
eth0 configuration: eth-id-00:0b:6a:2b:ce:d0


th0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0B:6A:2B:CE: D0
BROADCAST NOTRAILERS MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1800 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:25 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:115605 (112.8 Kb) TX bytes:8880 (8.6 Kb)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0xc000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:369 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:369 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:25444 (24.8 Kb) TX bytes:25444 (24.8 Kb)

sit0 Link encap:IPv6-in-IPv4
NOARP MTU:1480 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

zoro

Ah - well it looks like your ethernet card is failing to start due to routing problems .. .but i thought that they were dynamically created??

Anyway, for now, you should read your router instructions - it is probably automatically given 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.0.1 as a default ip address ... what ever it has been given, you must setup your network card to be on the same subnet:

Router
192.168.0.1 / 192.168.1.1
PC
IP: 192.168.0.10 / 192.168.1.10
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.0.1 / 192.168.1.1
DNS: 192.168.0.1 / 192.168.1.1
DNS2: Optional

Setup your network settings to those that I've given you and try to ping your router....
From a terminal window, type:
ping 192.168.0.1
(or 192.168.1.1 - depending on what you read in the instructions)

Let us know how you got on.
Unfortunately I don't know enough about IPv6 to help you out if it's a problem relating to that ... but good luck!

Zoro

Fenster

I tried it this morning before work and got told that there was no network device found. So...not good. I'm going to cross-post this on Linux Questions and see if they'll be able to help me more.

Fenster

I've cross posted it here.

Having read around on the board, I'm starting to see that networking issues with Suse 9.1 are a common problem. Joy.

nadir

you should do this

adsl-setup

dhcpcd eth0
adsl-start

route add default gw ip-address-of-router

as in route add default gw 192.168.0.10

or something

you will also nned to put in resolving servers in /etc/resolv.conf
when pinging ping, ipadresses, like dont ping google.com, ping its ip .

Placebo

haha i had suise back in my 56k days and it had no drivers for winmodem and you had to run these scripts to install everything, hell i got rid of the devil.

zoro

Originally posted by nadir
you should do this
....loads of stuff

There's no point, as the card isn't even being seen by the OS - it's a drivers issue, and one that he'll probably get resolved on the other board ... good luck Fenster

niallb

Hi Fenster,
I'm not so sure your driver isn't loading, but it's not getting set up completely.
I remember having an odd problem with one of these
last year - something to do with "MII PHY" in the logs,
if I recall correctly.
The effect was that it failed to autonegotiate the correct speed with the switch.
I notice your board claims to be transmitting and receiving data:

RX packets:1530 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:11 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:93957 (91.7 Kb) TX bytes:2852 (2.7 Kb)


Try running mii-tool to see what it says.
It should give you a response like:
eth0: negotiated 100baseTx-FD flow-control, link ok
if the physical link is good and the driver is loaded.

If you still have a windows partition, boot it up (it works on the network) and launch a command prompt window.
Type in ipconfig /all to get an idea of what a working configuration looks like. You could also use the route show command to see what your router's address is.

If you get an IP address there, make a note of it.
Restart SuSE, and don't rely on DHCP, as it could be your problem.
As root, type in ifconfig eth0 ($WindowsIPaddress) up
and see what happens.
You may need to type ifdown eth0 first to stop
the dhcp client.
Now try to ping ($RouterAddressFromWindows)
and see if you get a reply.

If you do, try
route add default gateway $RouterAddressFromWindows and try to ping somewhere else, for example
ping 194.125.2.240 (A nameserver).
If that works, edit /etc/resolv.conf and add the line
nameserver 194.125.2.240

If this doesn't work for you, try
mii-tool -v -v to get an idea of what the card is capable of, and then mii-tool --watch -r to force renegotiation.
Of course if mii-tool gives you an error, you could have stopped reading there!

Good luck,
NiallB

Fenster

Well I've followed all of the given advice so far and while my ethernet is detected and configured correctly in Yase, my router is only showing as follows:

Unknown (PPPOE-style) DSL Device Detected

After much trying, I accessed the router's http configuration page and it shows as follows:

Hardware Netopia Model 3346 DSL Ethernet Switch

Serial Number 13143760     Software Version 7.3.3r0    Product ID 1217
Date & Time 7/28/04 08:21:32 PM

WAN

Status Up    Data Rate (Kbps) Downstream: 512 Upstream: 128 
Local Address <ip>
Peer Address <ip>
Connection Type Instant On    NAT On
WAN Users Unlimited

LAN

IP Address 192.168.1.254      Netmask 255.255.255.0
Ethernet Status Up
DHCP Server On
DHCP Leases 1 out of 253 leases in use
DNS-1 159.134.237.6      DNS-2 159.134.248.17

Diagnostics on the router showed everything to be running:

==== Checking LAN Interfaces
Check Ethernet LAN connect                             : PASS
 Check IP connect to Ethernet (LAN)                    : PASS
  Pinging Gateway                                      : PASS
==== Checking DSL (WAN) Interfaces
Check DSL Synchronization                              : PASS
 Check ATM Cell-Delineation                            : PASS
  ATM OAM Segment Ping through  (vcc1)                 : PASS
  ATM OAM End-To-End Ping through  (vcc1)              : PASS
  Check Ethernet connect to AAL5  (vcc1)               : PASS
   Check PPPOE connect to Ethernet (vcc1)              : PASS
    Check PPP connect to PPPOE (vcc1)                  : PASS
     Check IP connect to PPP (vcc1)                    : PASS
      Pinging Gateway                                  : PASS
==== Checking Miscellaneous
Check DNS- Query for netopia.com                       : PASS
Ping DNS Server Primary IP Address                     : PASS
TEST DONE

So everything apprears to be rosy and well as far as the router itself is concerned. Now, I ran other commands as requested by various people and I got the following:

First off afterwards I pinged the router:

linux:/home/<name> # ping 192.168.1.1
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.


--- 192.168.1.1 ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 received, 0% packet loss, time 8998ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.038/0.041/0.050/0.003 ms

Etc etc, it pinged okay. Next off I pinged google.com

ping: unknown host http://www.google.com

I also get the same error when I try to open a page in Konqueror.

I tried to edit /etc/resolv/conf but its just telling me I don't have enough disc room. I assume it needs root access or the like.

Lastly for now, trying to run mii-tool just gives me an error that there's no mii interface/.

SIOCGMIIPHY on 'eth0' failed: Operation not supported
no MII interfaces found/

niallb

OK,
nice one for persevering!
Lets get a few things out of the way.

Are you saying that yast mentions your DSL router?
Did you connect to the router's configuration page from linux?
If so, excellent, you're probably only one step away.

You'll need a package from roaring penguin called pppoe
http://www.roaringpenguin.com/pppoe/
An rpm of pppoe is probably on your SuSE disks.
When you get it installed, run the script adsl-setup
and answer the questions.
After that, typing adsl-start may be all that's required.

If not, you're probably two steps away.
What do you get now when you type in ifconfig eth0?
Do you get number of received and transmitted packets or not?
The ping 192.168.1.1 is not actually pinging the router,
it's pinging itself. The router is 192.168.1.254,
so the next step is to try pinging that as well.

The file to add the nameserver entry to is /etc/resolv.conf
rather than /etc/resolv/conf, but the diskspace issue
is unusual. You do need to be root to make any changes here.
What is the exact error you see?
This could be a big problem if your disk is full.
What is the output of df -h?
It should show you if a disk is completely full.

The report that one IP address is allocated as a DHCP lease
suggests that your card may well have it.
If not try running ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.1 up .

I'm surprised at the report that no mii registers were found,
that's not such a good sign.
What kernel version are you using?
uname -r will tell you.

Good luck,
NiallB

Fenster

Well eventually I got it fixed by changing my DNS settings.

Thank you to everyone who helped out.

nadir

zoro wrote:

There's no point, as the card isn't even being seen by the OS - it's a drivers issue, and one that he'll probably get resolved on the other board ... good luck Fenster

hrm, how exactly do you come to taht conclusion

linux:/home/<name> # ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0B:6A:2B:CE: D0
inet6 addr: fe80::20b:6aff:fe2b:ced0/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1530 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:11 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:93957 (91.7 Kb) TX bytes:2852 (2.7 Kb)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0xc000

looks pretty ok to me.


glad to see you got set up anyhow fenster

MarkR

Fenster wrote:

So I decided to try Linux...

After some friends urged me to try it, I read up on it and after consulting websites, boards and books, I downloaded Suse Linux 9.1, which I gather is the most-idiot proof of all Linux distros.

It installed like a dream, is secure, highly-customizable and I'm finding it great for editing pictures and media work in general.

The catch? No internet.

Now before I go on, I must state I consider myself a seasoned XP user. I know my way in and around the OS, but like most Windows users, I'm like a deer in headlights when it comes to editing and creating scripts and compiling code. I don't doubt that it will come to me in time, but for now I'm afraid to touch anything as I know Linux isn't forgiving if you screw up a critical setting.

Now, down to the gory details. I've Eircom home DSL (512/128) through a Netopia Model 3346 DSL Ethernet router. The problem as near as I can tell is that Suse isn't even detecting the router. I figure that this board is the best place to try for help first as its likely one or more people here would have enountered the same problem.

If anyone can help my newbie self in this matter it would be very much appreciatied.

Don't know if this is what you want to hear, but I've been trying to dabble for a while in linux, always installed grand etc, but no internet. I'm on UTV clicksilver, which is a USB ADSL modem. Hard going to get it to work under linux (recompile kernal and stuff). Anyway, got a netopia cayman 3341 from my brother and installed Fedora Core 2 this morning. I'm on the net right now using it. Amazingly easy to do. It has it's own network configuation wizard, just select an adsl connection, enter user name password etc and robert is your mother's brother. If you want fedora core 2 I have it on DVD (was going to install Suse 9.0 prof as well, as I also heard it was idiot proof, can't see the point now). Anyway, I have a DVD burner and some blank disks here if you want to try this distro...