Suddenly can't connect.

**Kman** · 05-30-2003, 03:47 AM

I fired up the Knoppix cd a bit ago. I went about making a connection the same way I did yesterday. Everything looked like it did yesterday. I got the connection has been established message. But nothing will load in either browser. I have done nothing new to this comp. The rest of the OS runs fine. It just suddenly won't load up any web pages. DSL still works fine on my winblows 98 box. Anyone have any thoughts on this, why this suddenly won't work only hours after I had it running fine. I'd really like to run this OS very much. Thanks for any help.

Kman

**Stephen** · 05-30-2003, 04:45 AM

Can you ping an outside address (ping 212.100.234.54) from knoppix if this is true you have a DNS problem.

Check your network settings in Windows (IIRC winipcfg in the run dialog) and compare them to ifconfig eth? in Knoppix and look for differences. Also how are you connected through DHCP or static settings.

**Harry Kuhman** · 05-30-2003, 08:03 AM

Originally Posted by Kman

I fired up the Knoppix cd a bit ago. I went about making a connection the same way I did yesterday. Everything looked like it did yesterday. I got the connection has been established message. But nothing will load in either browser. I have done nothing new to this comp. The rest of the OS runs fine. It just suddenly won't load up any web pages. DSL still works fine on my winblows 98 box. Anyone have any thoughts on this, why this suddenly won't work only hours after I had it running fine. I'd really like to run this OS very much. Thanks for any help.

Kman

As the other post said, if you have a local network see if you can ping other addresses on the network (the router is a good place to start). Also, you can try netcardconfig and see if it will get you a dhcp connection, and if not you can try to manually configure the card and see if that works.

I experienced what sounds like the same problem a little over a month ago, Knoppix connected fine, then a few days later the same CD would not. I sure don't know that it's the same thing, but you might want to read through the 2 threads here I've started..

If you can't ping another local IP address, I'm very interested in finding out what the problem is. I do have a theory, but it's much more important to get the real cause than to prove my theory right. Did you run any other software on the computer since the last time Knoppix worked and connected for you? Another version of Knoppix? Another bootable CD? An operating system on your hard drive? Windows? If any of these, please tell me to the best of your ability what you ran.

If you cannot ping a local IP address (and have other devices to ping), I'm also very interested in finding out what your nic is and getting any internal information we can from it. I've posted the info on this in the other threads, so will not duplicate it here unless you ask specific questions.

Harry

**Kman** · 05-30-2003, 02:22 PM

Hey, thanks for the responses. I have not ran any other disks or installed anything, but I did turn on the comp thinking I had the knoppix disk in the drive, when in fact it was not. Windows had almost loaded when I noticed I had not put in the disk. So I hit the power off switch before it got completely loaded. I put in the knoppix cd, started it up. Everything ran fine except the net. I'm really new to broadband, so I don't have the greatest handle on pinging addresses. I'm using a D-Link DFE-530TX+ pci adapter card. I'll try to find out more.... I just read in your other posts about the windows updates messing things up. Scary! However I have not run any updates on my comp. It appears as if this is also maybe an XP problem. I'm still in the days of Windows 98. I see others are having similar problems. I do hope we can find the cure for this. Thanks for your help. Forgive my ignorance, but where do I input the netcardconfig command to see if it'll work ? At startup or once Knoppix has loaded? And how about manually configuring the card? Thanks.

Kman

**Stephen** · 05-30-2003, 06:10 PM

When knoppix has booted open a console window (the clam shell icon on the taskbar) and enter it there, netcardconfig is configuring manually so to speak. If you want you can edit the files /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/resolv.conf to achieve the same effect.

To ping an address, in a console window simply ping web.site.name or the numeric version of the address as I suggested above.

Other usefull command lsmod to find the modules loaded I believe your card uses the tulip module so look for that being loaded and in use.

Also you have not mentioned do you use DHCP or static settings.

**Harry Kuhman** · 05-30-2003, 06:15 PM

Originally Posted by Kman

I'm still in the days of Windows 98. I see others are having similar problems. I do hope we can find the cure for this. Thanks for your help. Forgive my ignorance, but where do I input the netcardconfig command to see if it'll work ? At startup or once Knoppix has loaded? And how about manually configuring the card? Thanks.

Striker2002 reports that he's seen it on a Win98 system. It would be reasonable, if it is M$ doing this, which is not proved even though things point that way, to assume that they are finding ways to do it with all flavors of their system. Also, if you have installed a recent version of Media Player, the fine print in the "click through licencising agreement" pretty much says you give them the right to disable any software on your system they want, M$ software or other software. It does not, however, give them the right to damage your hardware, which changing an eeprom to bad values does.

On pinging: tell us what you have on your system. You first post said DSL still works fine on my winblows 98 box so it sounds like you have a local network. Guess you could be plugging and unplugging computers into your DSL modem, or that "windows 98 box" might even be the same computer without the Knoppix CD, but it would help greatly to know if you have a DSL router like the Linksys installed. This would make it easy to ping a local device (the router itself would be a good first target). If you don't have one, then do a traceroute to any URL while in Windows and note the first couple of IP addresses you see and try to ping them under windows. You should be able to ping them under Knoppix as well, but this does involve a lot more things working (like logging into your DSL account) than is involved with pinging a local router. In fact, given the current low cost of these devices, I would suggest getting one even if you had only 1 computer on your DSL connection. It gives a lot more utility in working with the network and it gives you an extra hardware firewall (there are some issues with a few applications like NetMeeting, but overall the extra security is worth it).

As to where to input netcardconfig: Fire up a shell (little icon on the bottom set of tools with a shell in a window). Type netcardconfig. You'll see it brings up a utility to configure your network card. This same utility is available in the menus, but I don't recall exactly what you go through and don't have Knoppix running at the moment. But you'll need the shell anyway if you need to reset the card (sudo mii-tool -r and then netcardconfig).

**deadmule** · 05-30-2003, 06:28 PM

an update on knoppix networking not working properly

I had 3.1 working fine(early may) and then after updating WindowsxpPro I could no longer connect with 3.1. I downloaded 3.2 but nothing changed.

I connect directly to a westel wirespeed dsl but cannot get knoppix to connect....

just finished dl'ing , burning and booting SuSe 8.2 LIVE, It connects just fine! (though it doesn't see NTFS partitions, which is why I want my knoppix back!)

might try the gentoo live distro next

not sure if this helps but the mystery deepens.

DeadMule

**Harry Kuhman** · 05-30-2003, 07:30 PM

Originally Posted by deadmule

I had 3.1 working fine(early may) and then after updating WindowsxpPro I could no longer connect with 3.1. I downloaded 3.2 but nothing changed.

I connect directly to a westel wirespeed dsl but cannot get knoppix to connect....

just finished dl'ing , burning and booting SuSe 8.2 LIVE, It connects just fine!
not sure if this helps but the mystery deepens.

DeadMule

3.1 failed on me the exact same way after WinXP updates. My local network is different, so iI was able to watch packets (or lack of them) from another computer on a hub and be sure I wasn't sending anything.

Please try this: Start Knoppix, try browsing to a website and see it fail. open a shell window. type ifconfig eth0 and see if there are any TX errors reported (there was a TX error and a carrier error for every Tx packet in my case).

Try the mii-tool reset and rerun netcardconfig I've mentioned in the other threads and please let me know if it works for you.

It's not a hugh mystery that some distros work or fail differenly than others, Whatever is doing this isn't breaking it so bad that networking doesn't work at all (although there was a Windows update last week that did that! see:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor..._bug&printer=1 ) so some systems (I expect those that just configure the nic and don't default to eeprom settings) work OK. Maybe last weeks bad Windows update was an attempt to get them too that backfired.

**Kman** · 05-31-2003, 05:32 PM

Hey thanks for the how to instructions guys. I believe I am using DHCP settings. I do have a D-link DI -604 router, but do not have it up and running yet. I will get it going and see what I come up with. I hope to get some time tonight or tommorow to try these options. I'll let you know what happens. Again thanks for the instructions. Hopefully these will work.

Kman