Network Interfaces "Missing" on Dell Latitude D600
Hello all!
Please forgive me if there would have been a better place to post this,
but this board seems the most appropriate. I have scoured the web trying
to find an answer to this, and while there are solutions that come
close, I am finding it difficult to find someone with the exact issue I
have.
I installed Debian 5.0.2 from a DVD two days ago. The install went fine
so far as I could tell, and after a reboot, I was greeted with the warm
familiarity of a Gnome screen, only to discover that my network was not
working. Both wired (Broadcom) and wireless (Intel) could not get me on
the network. I looked at the gnome network panel, and it had a couple of
generic pale blue/grey icons for a wired connection and a wireless
connection (not the specific green PCI icon, etc...). I could "enable"
and configure each. When I pull up the gnome network status panel (I
have it pinned to the bar), the only interface listed is the loopback
lo. I find this odd as the wireless can correctly detect the available
networks in my area, so I have to believe that some part of the
networking system is behaving correctly. ifconfig also only lists the
loopback. lspci identifies the NIC/WLAN's correctly.
I burned a new DVD and tried reinstalling, and this time during setup,
opted for the ethernet connection to be the one selected for install
instead of the wireless (which it defaults to). Once booted to a
desktop, the ethernet connection, eth0, shows up and connects properly,
and in the Gnome network status panel, it shows lo and eth0 on the
pulldown menu. Even though it's not listed, if I type in eth1, it will
even bring up the status of the wireless, but I have no way to connect.
I have tried using the network configuration panel, iwconfig per the man
page instructions, and have tried putting the settings directly into
/etc/network/interfaces, but cannot seem to get it to show up as a valid
interface, let alone connect.
From what I have found in my searches, others are having no trouble
with getting the D600 up and running. I have seen several tools
suggested on other pages such as nictools-pci and mii-tools, but I'm not
sure which of them are really appropriate for my cards. Again, the
machine can still seem to see the available wireless networks without a
problem, and some part of Debian seems to be aware of functioning cards,
but somewhere it loses them. As an aside, if it renders any clues, the
Ubuntu Live CD 8.10 handles the networking perfectly.
I am new to Debian and am taking my first serious shot at Linux after
being an avid user of BSD for quite some time, so please reply in a
manner that reflects a familiarity with UNIX paradigms, but does not
assume particular knowledge of Linux or, more specifically, Debian.
Any help you can offer would be appreciated!
~ Jeff
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