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Basic linux network questions (long)



Hello,

Sorry for the cross-post, but this thread has generic and laptop related
issues.

I installed Potato (running the default 2.2.19 kernel) on an IBM 600e
Thinkpad about a month ago.  I seem to have clobbered something 

This problem list is in chronological order.  I'm not (necessarily) looking
for answers to the specific problems, but rather what tools I can use to
diagnose them.

Problem #1

The original install seemed to pick up the PCMCIA support just fine, and it
appears to recognize my network card without any problems.  I had to run
dhcpcd manually, though to get an IP address.  After that, everything worked
fine, except that I had to restart dhcpcd every time I rebooted.

Problem #2

Downloaded the 2.2.20 kernel sources from kernel.org (no, I didn't use the
Debian package - I kind of wanted to step through the process manually)
Realized that the laptop is distracting me at work, so I decide to take it
home.  Built the 2.2.20 kernel.  Boots fine.

Of course, I don't have a broadband connection at home (dialup only).  I
"sneaker-net" the TP600e winmodem driver from my wife's Win2K box, rebuild
the kernel (because I forgot to include floppy support!), build and install
the driver, and get ppp up and running.  Now I can dial in from my linux
box.  Cool.

I discover, however, that if I shut the lid on the box (it might be
hibernating, don't know - I didn't doing anything special for APM), and
reopen it, pon can't dial out without a reboot (just like Windows!).

Problem #3
This is the real blocking issue.  Today I bring the laptop back to work,
because I want to download some big packages.  First, no pcmcia, because I
didn't really do everything I needed to when I build 2.2.20 (specifically,
no pcmcia module in /lib/modules/linux2.2.20).  Ok, no big deal, since I
still have my 2.2.19 kernel in /boot.  Boot 2.2.19, run dhcpcd (as usual,
see Problem #1).  Domain names aren't resolving (ping www.yahoo.com
<http://www.yahoo.com>  - host unreachable), but I can ping IP addresses.  

Looked at the networking HOWTO - the only thing I found that looked wrong
was that route.conf was empty, so I added our DNS servers.  I can ping the
DNS servers (by IP address), but name resolution still fails.

All the earlier problems are things I can work around and tolerate.  The
last one is pretty much keeping me off the network.

Questions:

1. I checked that there was a symlink to dhcpcd from /etc/rc2.d (S13dhcpcd),
but I don't see any messages in /var/log/syslog.  The only thing I see is
the successful detection of the Ethernet adapter and it launching ./network
start eth0 (which is something I'll be taking a look at shortly).

2. Any hints as to why I didn't get a pcmcia module in my kernel build?  I
ran 'make modules modules-install', which I had assumed would handle that
for me.

3. Is there some way I can watch (debug) the DNS lookup and get a clue as to
why it's failing?

Thanks in advance,

Richard Wurdack



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