dhcp/ethernet question

[Alice Pinard <dmnsqrl@yahoo.com>]

hi, I'm trying to set up a firewall to connect to my cable modem ISP
(comcast) using DHCP

I've got a 3c905 ethernet card and I've got the 3c59x module running. I've
got the auto eth0 and iface eth0 inet dhcp lines in the
/etc/network/interfaces file. The ethernet cable is plugged in on both
ends, the cable modem is plugged in and it has lights.

I am getting a 'weirdness' and I'm not sure if it's on the DHCP end or the
ethernet end.

Basically if I do an ifconfig the ethernet card is entirely missing the
line that would begin with inet addr. It's not blank, it's not there with
a 0.0.0.0 address, it's just not there.

basically it looks like this

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:60:97:97:E9:92  
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1298 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:1298
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:443916 (433.5 KiB)
          Interrupt:10 Base address:0xff00 


I realize that there's other information that may be necessary but I'm not
sure what else might be particularly relevant at this pint

Is there anything off the top of anyone's head that would suggest what
area I should be directing my troubleshooting?

thanks


=====
-Alice
"Also _cute_ and _fluffy_!!!" (from Lilo and Stitch)