Hello,

I've been struggling for about a week and a half now setting up Debian. Building the Knoppix Live CD has been a big help. I love the new OS. Connecting to the Internet is my last major hurdle. At least once that's taken care of I'll be able to do my research for any future problems from home.

I have a VIA Rhine ethernet card. When running Linux off of the CD I was unable to connect to my DSL (Time Warner - RoadRunner). When running PPPOE/ADSL, first it would acknowledge my ethernet card (eth0), and then it would time out waiting for the PADO packets and I would get a message saying there was no Access Concentrator response from my provider. No DSL, no internet access.

I searched the fprums and here are some of the fixes I found and tried. Booting from the CD using the cheatcode "Knoppix Noapic" had no effect. I read the messages concerning Microsoft Security Updates changing the eeprom in the hardware so it does not run Linux. The recommended fixes for this, running "sudo mii-tool -r" and ifconfig from a shell were also ineffective for my problem. Perhaps I should mentioin that running ifconfig did bring up the line "UP BROADCASET RUNNING-MULTICAST" in reference to eth0.

Finally, I saw some messages that echoed the advice of the FAQ for those who use DHCP to connect to the Internet. The FAQ states that the hard disk installed system is "normal" Debian and that for DHCP I need to add these lines to /etc/network/interfaces:
- auto eth0
- iface eth0 inet dhcp
Well, after spending a day or so trying to edit that file I figured out that I needed root privileges to do so, and acquiring that capability would require installing to my hard drive. So, I did. I inserted those two lines at the end. Saved the file and no results. Then I tried some other things, put the lines in various position, moved the word loopback around to the end, etc etc.

Well, I'm pretty stumped. Any help or insight would be very much appreciated. While I am certainly willing to do my own homework and I look for the opportunity to do so, please keep in mind that I am very new to Linux and babytalk is encouraged.

Thank you.

GreenShirt