Re: network/name resolution problems

[Kent West <westk@acu.edu>]

Kent West wrote:

> Dan Davison wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, Monique Y. Herman wrote:
> >
> >  
> >
> > > On Mon, 17 Nov 2003 at 17:07 GMT, Dan Davison penned:
> > >   
> > >
> > > > I am trying to make an ethernet connection to a university network.
> > > > The network settings I am using work under windows on my other
> > > > partition, and worked on another machine running debian with a 2.2.xx
> > > > kernel.
> > > >     
> > >
> > > Is this DHCP or a static IP?
> > >   
> >
> >
> > I can do DHCP, I would like to do that if it's the easiest. To that 
> > end I
> > ran dpkg-reconfigure etherconf and followed the nice blue menus for 
> > people
> > like me, choosing DHCP. It seemed to think it had done its job, and
> > after that, ifconfig gave me:
> >
> > eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0A:E6:BD:B9:DA           UP 
> > BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
> >          RX packets:44555 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
> >          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
> >          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100          RX bytes:4690750 (4.4 
> > MiB)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
> >          Interrupt:10 Base address:0xe800
> > lo        Link encap:Local Loopback           inet addr:127.0.0.1  
> > Mask:255.0.0.0
> >          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
> >          RX packets:24 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
> >          TX packets:24 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
> >          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0          RX bytes:1648 (1.6 KiB)  
> > TX bytes:1648 (1.6 KiB)
> >
> >  
> I just spent all day fighting a similar problem with a Broadcom nic 
> (b44 module) on a new Dell Dimension 2400. It was working fine a 
> couple of days ago, then I compiled a kernel to try to get the modem 
> to work (turns out it wasn't necessary; I was using the HCF driver 
> instead of the HSF driver from linuxant.com - winmodem are just 
> nasty!). Anyhoo, after booting into my new kernel, the nic stopped 
> getting a DHCP address. It tried, but always failed. I could assign it 
> a static address and restart the network, and it looked like it 
> worked, but the network was unreachable. I even booted back into my 
> original stock 2.4.22-686 kernel and had the same problems there. Even 
> Knoppix stopped seeing the network (I'm not sure it ever did, but it 
> didn't now). I tried the mii-diag tool and a 2.4.18 kernel and lots of 
> reboots and everything I could think of.
>
> Finally I had the thought - hey, kill the power. So I powered down and 
> pulled the plug for 30 seconds or so. When I powered back up, the 
> network worked perfectly. Go figure.
Correction: it worked with a static IP. When I switched back to DHCP, my problems returned. Then I couldn't switch back to static again without powering down.

So I left it at static, and now am doing an apt-get upgrade, and find that I'm getting LOTs of connection problems. So apparently this nic and/or the driver isn't quite up to snuff. (Again, this is for the Broadcom nic, so may not have any relevance for you.)

--
Kent