Two hardware-related problems with Knoppix 5.0.1

[DaXiuyi]

G'day everyone,

Am a complete newbie to Linux, so sorry if I stuff up with terminology etc...

Am trying to get my Knoppix 5.0.1 to work, and it's doing great apart from 2 things:
1. Printers. I have a Samsung ML-1710 and when I try and configure it using the Configure Printers utility, I keep getting told that the driver doesn't exist. An earlier post suggested trying to configure it as a similar printer for which drivers exist (e.g. Samsung ML-1210), and I tried that, except it doesn't seem to work for any similar printers

2. Net connection. Konqueror seems to work fine, but Firefox just times out. I tried to use the network card configuration utility, but got a bit confused by the terms it asked for. Here's what I know from my Network connection settings in Windows XP: Address (assigned by DHCP), IP (xxx.xxx.1.2), Subnet (255.255.255.0) and Gateway (xxx.xxx.1.1). How do I get Knoppix to reflect this? I also tried to use the ADSL configuration utility, and I jst get timeouts all the time :S

If there's any particular output you need from a certain program or command prompt, please let me know. Otherwise any help would be greatly appreciated. I have seen solutions to similar sounding problems in the forums, but either they refer to an old ve4rsion of Knoppix or I've tried them and they don't work.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[Harry Kuhman]

2. Net connection. Konqueror seems to work fine, but Firefox just times out. I tried to use the network card configuration utility, but got a bit confused by the terms it asked for. Here's what I know from my Network connection settings in Windows XP: Address (assigned by DHCP), IP (xxx.xxx.1.2), Subnet (255.255.255.0) and Gateway (xxx.xxx.1.1). How do I get Knoppix to reflect this? I also tried to use the ADSL configuration utility, and I jst get timeouts all the time :S

I can't answer you first question. 2 looks interesting, although I don't have a good theory about what is going on yet. In my mind if Konquror works then Firefox should too. Can you tell us more about your configuration? You mention ADSL but never mention pppoe configuration. Are you using a router (which I very highly recommend doing)? It looks that way from the little bit of the IP that you let us see, but if that's the case it's just ignorant to hide the 192.168.2.1 entire address (or other private unroutable IP asddress). Such addresses can't be reached fron the Internet, millions of people are using the same addresses, and there is no reason to hide it and good reason to show it, particularly when you are trying to get help resolving this problem.

If you are using a router then Knoppix should be doing a dhcp handshake at boot time. post what it is getting (the full numbers, not partial munged numbers), by posting the output of ifconfig. You can also set these values by doing a netcardconfig and answering the dhcp question in the negative, but I would like to see the ifconfig output first. It looks like the handshake may be failing, but that doesn't really explain Konquror working and Firefix not. I suspect it may be some strange proxy issue, but that's a very wild guess.

And if you are using a router the make and model and even firmware revision may help. Some modern DSL modems have a router built in, so check that. And you might want to look into the availability of a flash update for the router and if you are at the current firmware level.

[rec9140]

Am trying to get my Knoppix 5.0.1 to work, and it's doing great apart from 2 things:
1. Printers. I have a Samsung ML-1710 and when I try and configure it using the Configure Printers utility, I keep getting told that the driver doesn't exist. An earlier post suggested trying to configure it as a similar printer for which drivers exist (e.g. Samsung ML-1210), and I tried that, except it doesn't seem to work for any similar printers

Printers are fubar'd in 5.02 as per Klaus from the debian-knoppix list. Its a permissions issue. I had to go back to 4.02 due that issue alone as if I can't print I can't work.

2. Net connection. Konqueror seems to work fine, but Firefox just times out. I tried to use the network card configuration utility, but got a bit confused by the terms it asked for. Here's what I know from my Network connection settings in Windows XP: Address (assigned by DHCP), IP (xxx.xxx.1.2), Subnet (255.255.255.0) and Gateway (xxx.xxx.1.1). How do I get Knoppix to reflect this? I also tried to use the ADSL configuration utility, and I jst get timeouts all the time :S

Did you try to let it set things via DHCP and it failed when you ran the netcard config script ?

If not, then let it try to set things via the script and via DHCP. DHCP will answer all the questions for the script automatically. Some routers can be incompatible with DHCP on Knoppix and then you will need to run it manually.

If you run ipconfig /all from a command prompt on a winvirus box and write the output down the important items:

IP Address = same in the script
Netmask = should ALWAYS bee 255.255.255.0 (Would only change in very specific instances, not likely in a home net)
Default Gateway = your ROUTER's IP, which in the winworld is normaly 192.168.0.1, or 192.168.1.1 NOT 192.168.1.254 like *nix
Name Server = DNS Servers You can either use the ones provided from the ISP, or use your router for the DNS/Nameserver. Most modern soho type rotuers will act as a DNS proxy and forward on your request to the WAN side.

Give the DHCP option a try and then post back.

[Harry Kuhman]

Netmask = should ALWAYS bee 255.255.255.0

This is a huge generalization, and not one that should go without a response. If you had said something like the netmask is usually 255.255.255.0 then I could accept that, but an uppercase always is just too strong. I have seen home networking equipment that uses different masks. A much better statement might be that DHCP should always set this for you, and when it doesn't, one should understand network masks and set it properly. I've written about how to set the mask and it's relation to broadcast address and the assigned IP address in other threads and don't have time to go into it again, but there is plenty of good information on the Internet that explains it in easy to understand terms (caution: not all of that information is correct).

Default Gateway = your ROUTER's IP, which in the winworld is normaly 192.168.0.1, or 192.168.1.1 NOT 192.168.1.254 like *nix

I'm not really clear on what you are saying here. Usually the default setup for a router is one that ends in .1, but I've seen 192.168.0.1, 192.168.1,1, 192.168.2.1 and 10.0.0.1 used pretty commonly (Belkin likes to use 192.168.2.1) and I've seen some routers that don't default to the last digit being 1. I must be missing what you are trying to say about a xxx.xxx.xx.254 address, while you can move most routers there, wherever the router is it would be reached by the same address from Windows, Linux, Unix or any other OS that you are running.

[DaXiuyi]

Ok, thanks for that guys. Like I said, I'm a real newb :P I'll focus on the Net connection then and explain what I can (as you can see, might not be much)

I'm on an ADSL (512/12 connection using a Netcomm NB5Plus4 ADSL Modem and Router (Netcomm are an Australian manufacturer, so I've attached the link to it here). From the info I've pulled out of Win XP, my connection info is:
IP: 192.168.1.2, Subnet: 255.255.255.0, Default Gateway=DHCP=DNS=192.168.1.1, Physical Address: 00-11-D8-B5-37-7E (if that helps). Sorry for not putting up the info before, I thought it was some sort of security thing...

I tried to use the netcardconfig utility and when I allow DHCP it runs automatically and closes itself. The output from ifconfig is below:
knoppix@1[knoppix]$ ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:118:B5:37:7E
inet addr:192.168.1.2 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::211:d8ff:feb5:377e/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:2228 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2535 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:2210393 (2.1 MiB) TX bytes:576835 (563.3 KiB)
Interrupt:22 Base address:0xa000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:18 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:18 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:900 (900.0 b) TX bytes:900 (900.0 b)

Umm, what does this mean? Hope this is what you're after...

When I run the ADSL config utility it detects eth0, then tries the first task (times out), then tries it again (times out again), returns an error message ("check your cable settings etc") and then closes itself.

Hope the information helps, and many thanks for your patience. Let me know if there's further stuff I need to post.

As for Firefox, when it first starts up an update window opens saying "checking for compatability updates to your Extensions" and it just hangs.

As for my printer, that's kind of frustrating. Now I know linuxprinting.org has linux drivers available for my printer, but if I were to download them, where would I put them so that once I boot Knoppix it detects them and works? Would anywhere work so that I can load them manually?

Many thanks.

[DaXiuyi]

Oh, and forgot one other piece of information. My network connection is through an SiS 900 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter...

Hope that helps too.

[DaXiuyi]

Oh sorry, forgot to include the ipconfig /all output. This might make more sense to you...

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : desktop
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : SiS 900 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-11-D8-B5-37-7E
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.2
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Tuesday, 26 September 2006 12:28:15 PM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Tuesday, 26 September 2006 1:28:15 PM

HTH, and many thanks again.

[Harry Kuhman]

DaXiuyi, I'm working on a horriably long technical post that will scare the hell out of you. Please stand by, I'll post as soon as I can.

[DaXiuyi]

Harry, that's ok. If it has to be technical, then so be it. It's the only way I'll learn...

Thanks heaps for your time and patience.

[Harry Kuhman]

Well DaXiuyi, what I can say is that the data that you have posted looks perfectly correct. And the fact that you can use Konquror as a browser supports that; it's able to access the Internet just fine. Which gets us back to Firefox, and pretty much right back to where we started, I'm still at a loss to know what that isn't working for you. I've rechecked and we are not in the HDD install forum and you have never indicated that you "installed" Knoppix, but as long as we're not fighting clasic networking problems that show up after such nonsense then we have a reeal puzzle here.

Of course, someone smarter than I may step in and know exactly what the issue is. We can hope that will happen. But while we're waiting and hoping, if you're interested in rolling up your sleves and getting your hands dirty in the guts of networking, I can tell you what my next step would be if this was my system. That next step (all I can think of at the moment) would be to actually look and see what is happening. In this case that's done by something called packet sniffing. This simply means looking at the blocks of data (packets) sent out and hopefully received when you try to access a web page. Looking at them byte by byte to see what parts of the packets look correct and what parts may look wrong, or what packets just never seem to happen and figure out why.

This may sound scarry (it sure as hell sounded complex the first time I tried to do it), but it's quite doable if you don't let it intimidate you. And there is a packet sniffing program called ethereal that you can use to do it. And guess what, ethereal just happens to be already included in Knoppix, so all you have to do is run it and, oh yea, interpret the captured data. I'll try to pass along enough info to make you dangerous.

Try this (what's the worst that can happen?): Boot Knoppix. Leave Konquror running. Run ethereal. I usually run it from the command prompt, but it's in the menus somewhere too. I also usually run it from the root account (sudo ethereal), which is a must if you are sniffing the wire and capturing traffic from other systems, but in your case you only need data to and from your own computer so you should not need root access if you don't want to use it. So with that info, start ethereal any way that you think suitable. I would open a terminal and type sudo ethereal or just open a root terminal and type ethereal.

Ethereal has a nice graphical interface, so a splash screen should show up, followed by a graphical window. The window will not be too scary at first, as there will not be much in it. But there will be an awful lot of options across the menu line. The place to start is with Capture and the second choice under that, options...

Now it's getting interesting, there will be lots of choices that may look like geek speak. At the top of the new window will be a drop down menu to pick which interface you want to sniff. These should include eth0, lo, and a pseudo interface. there may also be other interfaces here, depending on what networking hardware you have on your system. I expect and hope that you want eth0 (but make a note if there are any choices beyond the 3 that I mentioned). Leave the Link-layer setting below that set to ethernet. Don't check the Permiscious mode box in this case (although it will not matter if you do as long as you are doing this as root). Leave the "limit each packet" line unchecked. Leave the capure filter line blank, Leave the capture files section empty and don't put anything in the Stop after... section. To the right of these two I like to check the "update packets in real time" and then the "automatic scrolling" option that appears under it, but you can leave these unchecked if you want. Under name resolution check the first and third options, MAC and Transport and leave the middle option, network name, unchecked. I think this is what it will default to.

OK, that's the setup, now you're ready to capture packets. Say a prayer to your god and press the start button.

Within a few seconds you should see a window that shows how many packets of each type have been captured. It should start with no packets. But if you wait a few minutes you may see some background backets on the network, things like ARP packets. We don't really care about those though, and will have to ignore them in picking through the packets to understand this problem.

OK, remember that I said to leave Konquror open? Now would be a great time to switch back to Konquror. I would put a URL in the Konquror window and capture some packets. But don't capture a website like this one's packets, that would be way more traffic to pick through than you want to start with. I would suggest a nice simple clean website like http://checkip.dyndns.org/ . This site returns one simple string, no graphics, no frames, nothing complex, so it's a nice site to use for sniffing 101. Feel free to sniff other sites later, you'll learn a lot, but for now you just want to get basic packets worked out. Plug the above url into Konquror and let it load the page. When you have a string in the window, switch back to ethereal and hit the stop button to tell it to stop capturing packets. You should now see a window of all the packets that are involved in looking up that web page and getting you your line of text back.

OK, still with me? I'm not going to try to go into detail about what each packet is, but you should be able to see the packets from your computer that look up checkip.dyndns.org's IP from the URL, and then the packets that make the connection to the site and get the information. Scan through the list and see if you can't make sense of it. If you highlight any line you should see information about it in the middle third of the window and the raw packet byte by byte in the bottom window, but the most useful info is not the raw data but the human formatted representation of it in the top and middle windows. These will tell you key things like the source of the packet and the destination that it is being sent to. All of these packets (about 18 of them in this case) are sent and received to request and get this one line of text.

OK, now what? Same thing, but start Firefox and capture it's packets as it tries to access the same page. If it fails, as we expect, stop the sniffer and see what is different. Is Firefox trying to talk to a different address? Is it failing to look up the IP address? Is it getting the correct IP address? Is it making a connection to dyndns.org? Once you know what is going wrong you can try to determine why it is going wrong and then correct it.

One other thing that you might want to try is to bypass the DNS lookup and plug the correct IP address right into Firefox. If it can get to the website this way then you should suspect DNS, if it still can't get to the website then it's not a DNS issue, so you learn something either way. The IP address is 204.13.250.51 .

Good luck, let us know how it works out.