Rick Friedman <RickFriedman@vfemail.net> wrote:
Dear Rick,
I think the replies you're getting are making it sound more complicated
than it really is.
My hesitance comes with configuring the network. The installation
attempts to configure the network with DHCP. It then returns a message
saying: "The network is not using the DHCP protocol." It then allows
me to press a Continue button. BTW... my machine is a standalone
machine, not connected to any local network.
Yes, you can probably safely assume that your network is not using dhcp.
At this point, the installation gives me the opportunity to configure
the network manually.
1) It asks me for the IP address for this computer. What do I enter??
Can I enter any valid IP address?
I'll suggest a typical static address: 192.168.0.1
2) After that, it asks me to enter the netmask. Should I just accept
the default (255.255.255.0)??
Yes, that's fine.
3) Then, I am asked to enter the gateway IP address. I have no router.
It says in rare cases (with no router) the address can be left blank.
Should I leave it blank? Should I enter some address??
Leave it blank.
4) It then asks me to enter the nameserver addresses. I have the
address of Verizon Online's nameservers. OH! I have a DSL connection
with Verizon Online and my network card is SiS900 PCI Ethernet
adapter. I should enter those nameserver addresses here??
You can probably leave this blank too.
You probably don't need a broadcast address, but if it asks for one,
this should do: 192.168.0.255
That's all you need to do for basic network setup. By the way, the
output of all the above gets written to file /etc/network/interfaces.
You can peek in there if you like, and should see something like this:
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.2
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.0.0
broadcast 192.168.0.255
All of the above does not configure your Internet connection. Since you
have ADSL, you need to run this command, as root:
pppoeconf
It will ask you for your username and password. One important point -
the "username" has to be the whole thing (username+domain), for example,
if your login name is RickFriedman, you actually need
RickFriedman@vfemail.net plus the password. That part trips up a lot of
people.
That should do it. You'll be asked if you want to start the Internet
connection every time you boot up. If you answer "no", then to start the
connection you'll have to su to root and type this:
pon dsl-provider
And turn it off like this:
poff dsl-provider
Note that the above is literally "dsl-provider", not the name of your
DSL provider.
Hope this helps,
Robert