FC3 Fresh Install - found Eth0 but can't find DHCP...

[thayerw]

I've got an old eMachine 533id2 running Fedora Core 3 (Workstation Install) as of yesterday. During the installation, it detected the Network card properly as:

3Com 3c905b 100BaseTX [Cyclone] (a stand-alone PCI NIC)

Once the installation completed and the desktop is loaded, there is no internet access.

The NIC is listed in the Network Settings panel under "Hardware", but it says the IRQ is unknown and all other fields on that tab are empty.

On the "Devices" tab of Network Settings, it shows the Ethernet profile as inactive. Attempting to activate it fails. I have removed it from the listing and added it back again using the Internet Connection Wizard without success.

I also notice that during boot-up, FC3 hangs while trying to determine the IP address for Eth0.

I'm on Telus DSL (DHCP) in British Columbia, trying to connect to the internet through my SMC hardware router (though I've tried a direct connection as well) and I chose not to enable the FC3 firewall during setup, so that shouldn't be the cause.

Although I'm a complete linux newb (1 day), I have years of hardware experience for PC's and Windows-based software. I'm hoping to dive head-first into Linux and abandon Windows once and for all, but I GOTTA have internet access before I can do that.

I've searched through these forums and Google Linux, but I haven't found a solution yet.

Also, I've seen references to running the 'ifconfig' tool, but when I open the terminal in GNOME it tells me there is no command by that name. Am I missing something obvious?

Any suggestions at all would be greatly appreciated!

Thayer

[awdac]

Originally Posted by thayerw

Also, I've seen references to running the 'ifconfig' tool, but when I open the terminal in GNOME it tells me there is no command by that name. Am I missing something obvious?

If you're not root, it's probably not in your path. try: /sbin/ifconfig
and post the results.

[thayerw]

Originally Posted by awdac

If you're not root, it's probably not in your path. try: /sbin/ifconfig
and post the results.

Ah ha! that did the trick for running ifconfig, thanks! I'll paste the results as soon as I figure out how to get them from my linux box to my xp box... Oy!

[thayerw]

Ok, here we go:


[thayerw@localhost ~]$ /sbin/ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:04:BB:04:9A
inet6 addr: fe80::250:4ff:febb:49a/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:30 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:27 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:4591 (4.4 KiB) TX bytes:7902 (7.7 KiB)
Interrupt:9 Base address:0x3080

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:3688 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:3688 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:4352354 (4.1 MiB) TX bytes:4352354 (4.1 MiB)

[awdac]

OK, so what does it do when you run 'dhclient eth0' ? It looks like it's got the card ok. If it keeps looking, but doesn't find anything, when you run dhclient, try turning off the firewall momentarily and running it again. To turn off iptables (the firewall), just type 'service iptables stop' and then try dhclient again. You may have to be root to do all this (' su - ').

[thayerw]

Ok, I went straight to su just to avoid any hassles... i checked the status of iptables and it said it was off already. I ran dhclient Eth0 with the following results:

[root@localhost ~]# dhclient eth0
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.1
Copyright 2004 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/products/DHCP

sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
Listening on LPF/eth0/00:50:04:bb:04:9a
Sending on LPF/eth0/00:50:04:bb:04:9a
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 14
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 15
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.

[thayerw]

awdac,

I don't know what I did (or what you had me do), but I walked away from the computer for about 20 minutes and when I came back I had internet access!

I'm posting this from my hatbox right now... thanks a million!

[reneeccski]

I'm having the same problem as thayerw, except I tried your suggestions and they did not work (yes, I also tried walking away from my computer for 20 min!). Any other suggestions? I'm using a Piii Acer laptop with 192 M of ram. The nic that is detected is an Intel Corp 82557/8/9

When I try to activate the nic usning Network Device Control, I get a message saying:

"Cannot activate network device eth0!

4 packets transmitted, 0 received, +3 errors
100% packet loss, time 2999 ms,
pipe 4
failed."

I also have gotten a message saying "Cannot activate...

Determining ip information for eth0...failed; no link present. Check cable?"

I have tried inserting and removing the cable from both the router and the computer. I know this cable works, as I have used it in the past week and it worked fine. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Renee

edit: nevermind....I deleted the nic from the Network Device COntrol and reinstalled it using the internet connection wizard thingie and *poof* I got a ping response from yahoo.com. It's all better now. Thanks anyway.

[thayerw]

I think I know what was causing my problem, but I doubt it's the same cause of yours.

I retraced my steps and I figured that it was my router that was giving me grief. I had specifically configured my router to alot a range of only 4 IP addresses on my LAN, that way I'd always know which IP's were being used by 4 PC's. The problem was that though I had only 2 PC's connected at the time, the router had still "leased" the other 2 IP's out and wasn't offering any new ones to the linux box. As soon as I reverted the router to default settings, everything worked.

Good luck with yours though!