Linux hates the internet

[BobDaMenkey]

So, I've recently been trying to bring a bunch of old P3 machines back from the dead. I've got 2 tapped back into service. Both however have been giving me massive headaches under Linux distros.

Machine One: Mandrake 10.1
P3 800mhz
256mb DDR 2100
10gb Quantum Fireball HDD (Quantums never fscking die )
GeForce 2 MX (Neither do these things)

I got it up and running fairly easily. Mandrakes install was quite painless. Even the first day it didn't have any problems getting right onto the internet and downloading FireFox. But what I really wanted to do with these machines was run Distributed Computing programs, so I got BOINC up and running on it.

A day later BOINC was unable to send/recive WU's from the server, before S@H did it's usual "hardware outage". It was finally able to send and recive again after the servers came back up. But then it froze again at 5:05pm last night. I reset it this morning, and I can't get it to pick up the 'net at all.

I tried configuring it manually, which didn't work. Setting it back to DHCP didn't fix it either. Chaning ports on the switch or cat5 cables didn't help either. So I'm positivly puzzled as to what is causing these issues. And the command line stuff I learned from ubuntu didn't work in Mandrake.

I had even less promising results on my second P3 box. Puppy Linux couldn't find a driver that worked for hte ehternet card. Ubuntu under the server install and regular install couldn't get set up properly or see anything on the network.

So I dunno. It's driving me batty though.

 

[silverpig]

What does ifconfig say? Can you ping your router? What network card do you have? What's the output of lsmod?

 

[BobDaMenkey]

Hm, after having only a little more time to fiddle with it this morning before I left, I think it might be my switch giving up, though I'm not sure.

I installed XP on the second machine, and it wasn't able to get any response from my router. This same machine was having similar results when it was running ubuntu.

I hadn't been able to get the ifconfig command to work via terminal on the Mandrake box, and it wasn't able to ping anything as it would leave the eth0 unconnected. I'm not sure what the network cards are specifically. I *think* the 2nd box has an SMC EZ card or some such, at least that was the driver I remember seeing under XP.

The network looks like:
Cable modem
V
Router (Linksys wireless router)
V > Switch > Linux boxes
Laptop/other XP comp.

So I've got the router hooked up to a switch on the other side of the room with my linux boxes. It had been working a week ago when I had my rig in my sig on that side of the room. The router also is connected directly to a seperate computer which hasn't had any network issues.



I'll see if elminating the switch fixes the problem. What commands should I throw at it if it doesn't?

 

[n0cmonkey]

ifconfig -a
netstat -rn
cat /etc/resolv.conf

 

[BobDaMenkey]

Wow. I'm an idiot. The cable in had slipped loose because of a bad clip on the rj-45. Thanks for the info though guys, I'm sure it'll come in handy pretty soon when I start setting up more machines.

 

[pkme2]

I ran Ubuntu on some older PIIs and it worked perfectly, for student builds. Some something I thought might help.

 

[BobDaMenkey]

Originally posted by: pkme2
I ran Ubuntu on some older PIIs and it worked perfectly, for student builds. Some something I thought might help.

How much RAM did they have, and were you using a command line or a GUI?

My P3 800mhz with 128mb CRAWLED with the GUI up on it. The screen saver would be using 90% of the CPU and jerked like no other. Even at idle it was at 7-8% CPU usage, welll, with the system monitor thing up(GUI version, not a terminal with top).

 

[pkme2]

Originally posted by: BobDaMenkey

Originally posted by: pkme2
I ran Ubuntu on some older PIIs and it worked perfectly, for student builds. Some something I thought might help.

How much RAM did they have, and were you using a command line or a GUI?

My P3 800mhz with 128mb CRAWLED with the GUI up on it. The screen saver would be using 90% of the CPU and jerked like no other. Even at idle it was at 7-8% CPU usage, welll, with the system monitor thing up(GUI version, not a terminal with top).

256MB RAM and running from GUI. It wasn't fast on bootup, but ran AOK. Due to limited resources, no screensaver/background pics or anything running in the background. Just a simple setup with Open Office and Internet surfing. These were old eMachines and they worked! I only had a CD burner & floppy on these oldies. They ran on the Internet AOK, without any problems. I'll send your a pix of the setup by PM.