Newbie troubles with DSL

[GreenShirt]

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

[patelbhavesh]

Do you have a router to connect to the Internet ??
The reason why I ask this is because to the best of my knowledge you need to add the two lines
- auto eth0
- iface eth0 inet dhcp
only if you have a router which is acting as a DHCP server.

If you do not have a router then you need to configure adsl.I forgot where you can get it.But I believe it should be in the same menu where ppp is.
Once you setup your adsl correctly you should be able to connect to the internet.

Another thing is you can run knoppix and see if it can connect to your dchp server.You just need to boot and in majority of the cases knoppix detects the network card and tries to connect to DHCP.

-------------------------------------------------------------
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http://bhavesh.freeshell.org

[GreenShirt]

Hello patelbhavesh,

Thanks for the reply.

No, I do not have a router. My DSL provider, RoadRunner, uses DHCP.

I have tried the configure ADSL/PPPOE option. It lists my ethernet card but does not connect. I always get the message that the connection timed out waiting for PADO packets. The access concentrator of the provider does not respond.

I believe the problem has to do with the configuration file for loading modules (/etc/modules.conf) does not have the line "alias eth0 rhinefet" as the instructions for my driver say it should.

Regards.

[javiergarza4]

first of all, rr is not dsl. it is broadband. 2nd of all, how the heck would a router help? i got one, and the internet doesnt even half work in knoppix.

[Harry Kuhman]

...how the heck would a router help? i got one, and the internet doesnt even half work in knoppix.

A router is a big help. With a router it's the router that takes care of the the connection to the ISP, and does dhcp for the local connections. So you just fire up Knoppix and get a dhcp assignment and can use the Internet (as well as connect to any other local machines).

So you say you have, err, got one, and it doesn't even "half work" "in" knoppix. You might want to ask why that is rather than disparage using a router. I suspect that you are having a problem with DHCP and the router. That's just a guess of course, untill you post some better information, but if it's a Belkin router the chances of it being that just went sky high. The Belkin routers are crap, and don't do proper dhcp handshaking with Knoppix. Don't blame Knoppix, it's not it's fault. It's not likely to be the only problem you would have with a Belkin router, either. I can tell you that both my Linksys and my SMC routers handshake with Knoppix just fine (on my desktop system, and once I get past what a "security update" seems to have done to my notebook network interface by resetting it with a command or a cheat code). And I have DSL, and don't have to do anything to run PPPoE, or log in to my ISP, or make any extra settings in Knoppix at all, I just boot and I'm on the network, thanks to my router.

[ec]

I use qworst, and just signed in for the first time using said dsl. Is there something about a ip that is all numbers in the instruction booklet that came with your stuff that looks something like http://192.168.0.1 to sign in the first time? IF yours is like mine, that sets the domain or whatever and follow the pages for setup and viole, I was in.

This only sets up the computer to dsl router, you then tell it to restart/reset or something like it and then pop a browser and surf!

Hope this helped, then maybe not.

[Harry Kuhman]

I use qworst, and just signed in for the first time using said dsl. Is there something about a ip that is all numbers in the instruction booklet that came with your stuff that looks something like http://192.168.0.1 to sign in the first time? IF yours is like mine, that sets the domain or whatever and follow the pages for setup and viole, I was in.

This only sets up the computer to dsl router, you then tell it to restart/reset or something like it and then pop a browser and surf!

Hope this helped, then maybe not.

I'm not sure f you're trying to quote someone in the first paragraph or not. the address given looks like the default address for some of the routers sold for home and small office use. You put that address in a browser to gain access to a "web interface based" set of configuration pages. From there, for systems where you need to provide a username and password to your ISP you configure the router to log in for you. There generally are lots of other options, that vary somewhat from brand to brand. These might involve sending inbound traffic on certain ports to certain local machines, blocking access to certain URLs, IP addresses or Internet services to some or all of your local machines, logging features, and other bells and whistles.

I'm not clear what you're asking by

Is there something about a ip that is all numbers in the instruction booklet...

This is just an IP address (in this case one for your local network, and one of a special group of addresses that can only be local, addresses in the range 182.168.xxx.xxx (and several others) can not be routed across the Internet. It's done numerically rather than by a text URL because no domain name server would lookup a URL and return to you the local address for the router (which you might even want to reconfigure to another address if your local network requires that for some reason). Of course, you could create a URL for this address and put it in your hosts file in Windows if you wanted (but you would still need to use the numeric IP address if you booted Knoppix from CD).