San Diego Road Runner and Mandrake Linux Help......

[Thebareone]

I just installed Mandrake Linux 8.1 and im having a problem getting my cable modem to connect To my San Diego Road Runner Service. I?ve done some searching on the net and have come up with only more questions. I?ve use windows my whole computing life and im interested in the Linux operating system. I tried redhat once before but had a bunch of hardware conflicts. I?m extremely satisfied so far with mandrake Linux. Here is what I know so far....Some road runner services require rrlogin to connect while others don't. I believe San Diego is one that doesn't require it. I did find the rrlogin off a web site and put it on a floppy. When I tried to use it in Linux it gave me a bunch of errors when it tried to mount it.(any help on that would be great also) I used winipcfg to find out all the info I could on ip address, sub net, gateway and etc...But when I run the cofig with Mandrake Linux it always says it can't connect. I?m hoping that somebody out there reading this lives in San Diego and has had the same problem and figured out how to solve it. Or if anybody could point me to a specific web site to my problem, that would make my day. I hate having to reboot into windows just to get documents on how to do something. One final question, where is the best download site for Linux software? Thanks..

 

[EmperorRob]

First things first what are the results of these commands:

1. ifconfig
2. cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth* (replace * with whatever interface you have hooked to your modem)

 

[Thebareone]

I tried running both commands and got a "command not found" message. I tried the run command and the x terminal. I?m not too sure if you have to be in the right dir or not. I have a lot to learn about Linux. I tried for a couple of hours of just trying to find a find command and getting it to find the file ipconfig. But by poking around I did find the file ifcfg-eth0 which I believe is referring to my Ethernet card. When I open the txt file I see the following each with some numbers im kind of nervous of just putting up on a forum if my spelling is off I apologize in advance.

Device=eth0
boot proto
netmask
network
broadcast
onboot=yes

Thanks for your help

 

[EmperorRob]

OK, are you familiar with your $PATH variable? If not doesn't really matter, /sbin/ifconfig I believe is the full path for it. By Red Hat's default unless you log in as root it won't be in your $PATH variable. ifconfig will show you your active interfaces along with their IP addresses, netmasks, and gateways.

I'm guessing since you're on a cable modem you hookup by DHCP? I'll double-check when I get back to the house, but I believe your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 file should read like this:

device=eth0
boot proto=dhcp
onboot=yes

After you save the changes to this file try executing this command as root /etc/init.d/network restart
See where that gets you.

 

[Thebareone]

Thanks for your continuing interest in my problem. Here is the info I could gather

Device=eth0
bootproto=dhcp
ip=XXXXXXXXXX(left out on purpose)
netmask=255.255.255.0
network=XXXX(almost the same as ip address )
broadcast=xxxxxxxxxxxx(almost the same)
onboot=yes

I looked around on the net and found at www.vortech.net/rrlinux a login program that has to do with road runner. I was also wondering if there was a way I could check to see if my Ethernet card is actually working and the driver is really loaded. It shows up on the Wizard screens as the correct driver and card. But every time it tries to connect to the net the network monitor shows no activity at all. I went through all the wizards both with auto settings and trying to set them manually. One question that keeps coming back to me is that I have a cable modem and connect to the net via a cable modem but it auto detects as a LAN connection. I have tried both options. So now ive downloaded some "???RPMS???" off the vortech site and have stumbled upon the mounting sequence and this problem just keeps on getting better and better.................................I just wish I had endless time to read tons of manuals and the time to hack away....

Thanks in advance!!

 

[EmperorRob]

What brand of NIC do you have?

What is the result of bringing up your card on boot? It should either be [ OK ] or [ FAILED ]. You can check this by watching as your machine boots. If it boots too fast to read then grep eth0 /var/log/boot.log file and check the last match which should be the latest date and find whether it succeeded or not.

 

[dkk]

There shouldn't be any needs for rrlogin in SD. I'm running FreeBSD without a problem. You may want to try a power cycle on the modem. You can use a dhcpc or just assign it an IP (obtained from Windows winipcfg/ipconfig), which is what I did.

 

[Thebareone]

I figured out how to look at the boot.log. I tried the command you gave me and it wouldn't work. I tried the run command and at a terminal. I finally found it with the file manager (konkour or sumtin) and tried to run it and it wouldn't work. I finally logged in as root and opened it with the advance editor and finally got to read it and it said failed in a bunch of places dealing with my network card. I have an ecs motherboard with a sis735 chipset. It uses a sis900 Ethernet adapter. I looked up on the mandrake site and they don't support it. So now im combing the dessert to find a driver or whatever it is they call it in Linux. If anybody has any suggestions im all ears. What does it take to install a new driver? Do I have to recompile it or something?? Boy I fell like a Quaker at a disco!! But you know im slowly really starting to like Mandrake.

Thanks.......

 

[EmperorRob]

OK, to run the commands you should be in an xterm, or Konsole, or something similar. It'll look like a dos prompt sort of. If you're using KDE, it's a button on the bottom panel that looks like a monitor with a seashell on top of it. You should also be logged in as root.

Your adapter is an onboard LAN device isn't it? It is supported in Linux. You'll just have to recompile your kernel and enable its support. You already have to right kernel version too.

From an xterm/Konsole run this command rpm -qa | grep kernel
If you see 'kernel-source' in the results you're good to go. Otherwise you'll have to install the kernel-source.rpm which is probably on CD 2 of your Mandrake discs. Once you get your kernel source in you can recompile your kernel. Check out this link KERNEL How-To

 

[marat]

Edit: Oops let me try to find if there are compiled drivers for SiS900
Edit2: Actually MN8.1 has SIS900 driver compiled. Here is the link:

RPMFIND.NET Mandrake : /lib/modules/2.4.8-26mdk/kernel/drivers/net


Ok, I don't know about San Diego, but here what you can try (RR in my area):

In our area RR authenticates users with physical address of cable modem and network computer name and gives IP address with DHCP (although it rarely changes). Since your cable modem is the same ? don?t worry about physical address.

1. Start KDE (if you didn?t set it up to start automatically type startx)
2. Run Mandrake Control Center
3. Run Internet Connection Wizard
4. Lan card, DHCP
5. Set your hostname to whatever your hostname is in Windows
(or computer name in windows terms. If you have win98 you can find it with winipcfg or right click on network neighborhood icon on desktop ->Properties->Network Identification. In win2k/me ? My Computer icon on desktop -> properties. ->Network Identification).
This network name DOES NOT include domain, meaning there is no .com or anything like that. It should have NO dots. It is something like xx123456-b

6. Let it test the connection and you are set

 

[Thebareone]

I just thought i would give an update. Well i tried redoing the kernel and got through it ok (thanks a million on the howto for the kernel rebuild), but i kept on getting an error saying my clock time was off and that the build would be incomplete. So instead of messing around with that i decided to try Red hat 7.2 and ran into the same problems as before. I disabled the onboard lan card and put in an old pci card and it detected it just fine (i now know i can't use my onboard lan). I got all the settings messed up with DNS numbers and ip address that im going to go back and try to enable DHCP somehow. The install with redhat somehow mesed up that partition and now boot magic won't see it and partion magic gives me errors when i try to run it in Win98. So i just use the LILO boot loader of a floppy and it boots up ok. Now i have to figure out what all the DNS numbers mean and what goes where.

Win ip cfg gives me this
DNS SERVERS: 24.25.195.1
24.25.195.1

When i use neo trace and trace my own IP address i get this:

Domain system inverse mapping provided by:
dns1.rr.com 24.30.200.3
dns2.rr.com 24.30.201.3
dns3.rr.com 24.30.199.7
dns4.rr.com 65.24.0.172

So if anybody can give me a hint on what i really need, please let me know. Also what is the host name and what is the domain name?

Thanks for your time from another linux newbie.

 

[EmperorRob]

If you're on DHCP it won't matter what you set your hostname.domainname to. Just try setting your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 to what I posted in my 2nd post and give that a shot. Also in Red Hat, there's a gui for configuring your ethernet devices under the System tab on the main menu. In Gnome it's a foot icon in the lower left corner of your screen. In KDE it's a "K" in the same corner.

Oh and don't worry about setting your DNS server either. Those addresses are grabbed when your network is brought up and stored in /etc/resolv.conf.

 

[Thebareone]

I messed up the red hat intallation pretty bad so i put mandrake back in with the new ethernet card and did like ya said and im up and running. Im afraid i might have messed up the istall again because im getting some errors saying that dcopserver isn't on. But im sure i will figure it out now that i have an internet connection. Thanks for getting me started!!

One more thing, Im still getting errors saying my clock speed is off. Im guessing that it is saying the my processor speed is off. Do i need to rebuild the kernel to tell it what speed im running etc..... Thanks

 

[EmperorRob]

Rebuilding your kernel couldn't hurt; there are options to specify what type of processor you're running. The DCOP server is actually part of the KDE desktop. It creates 2 hidden files in your home directory when you login. They're aren't directly related to your network but could affect your KDE applications' performance. Most likely they are just temporary errors.