Hi all

Firstly, my apologies for a somewhat long-winded post; I assure you it reads very easily

I have Windows XP Pro on my HP laptop.
I decided to try out Linux, but I didn't want to have to change over completely for various reasons.
So I downloaded the Knoppix 3.6 (?) LiveCD ISO and burned it to a boot CDR.
Then I booted with it, and tried Knoppix a bit.

My home network has a DSL modem connected as a 'router'? ie. all the computers access the internet directly through the LAN.

However, I am totally new to Linux, so I had basically not a clue as to how to configure the LAN or internet to work under Knoppix on the laptop. I found netcardconfig, and ran it a few times, inputting values from my Windows XP setup under the LAN Network Connection. However, there were a few parameters that the program/utility asked me for which did not appear on the XP properties page, so I just input what seemed most logical to me at the time, based on the other settings of the DSL modem and the LAN connections, IP addresses... (I must admit that I am a bit fuzzy in my understanding of all those, too...)

Well, I couldn't get it to work properly, but I wasn't all that fussed, and I also didn't want to spend ages trying to solve this problem. After all, this was just a bit of experimenting.

Okay, so now I want to go back to using XP, thank you very much. The laptop boots (sans LiveCD of course), loads XP nicely. BUT it suddenly says that the network cable is unplugged. This is garbage; I haven't even touched the cable during my playing around with Knoppix. And I just tried the same cable on another computer on the desktop (XP of course), with no problem whatsoever.

In fact, when I plug the laptop into the hub, no light even goes on to indicate something is plugged in!

This all leads me to suspect that somehow Linux has messed with the network card's driver, or somehow with the card's internal memory (or am I way off-track here? Is that possible?) But surely using a LiveCD will, as promised, not affect the underlying system or hard drive??

So what I would really like to know is:
1. What has happened?
2. How can I fix it?
3. How can I prevent it from happening again?

This situation is quite problematic, as now I have no internet or LAN access on my laptop, whether using Windows or Linux (but really, at this stage Linux is not an option; as I've explained, I just don't have the time at this stage to learn a whole new (and more complex) OS, and ther're other reasons that I don't want to switch to Linux [at least just yet])

I hope someone can throw some light on this matter; I would be most appreciative!

Thank you!
Yours in code,

lutha

Thank Goodness!!

It's solved, and very simply:

I just booted once more with the Knoppix LiveCD (but didn't mess around with netcardconfig or anything this time), and then shut down and booted without the CD, into XP as usual.

Now the light's on on the hub, and we are online!!

Well, I don't know what happened there, but I'm very, *very* happy that the issue was resolved so simply!

I am curious to know what exactly did happen, though... (??)

Cheers,

lutha

I still want to be able to connect to the internet and LAN using Knoppix, though...

Is there any specific great online resource for a Linux newcomer?

Thanks,

lutha

Can't see why you had trouble. Is your router configured as a DHCP server ???.
This is the best option for these sort of situations - the router allocates IP addresses as machines connect.
Knoppix works fine in this environment, and you don't have to do a thing.
Doesn't LQ count ???.

Hi there

Thanks for your reply

I don't know. I think it might be, though for some reason we've allocated
permanent IP addresses to each of our computers on the LAN. I don't know why. ??

Okay, but when I typed in an url in Konqueror or Mozilla, it says something like:
Of course this site is a great help resource; I'm very impressed...
What I meant to say was, is there a site with easy tutorials for a newcomer to Linux.
Actually, I'm not sure what I meant to say. I haven't slept at all tonight;
I've done a through-the-nighter. Something may have got lost between brain and keyboard...

Again, thanks for your reply

Kind regards,

lutha

Shouldn't matter - so long as you have DHCP active.
What does dmesg have to say about your network on startup - open up a terminal and type Must be - google is your friend ...

dmesg says this: (right at the end)
I really am quite lost with this.
What does this mean? And why are all the comments from dmesg {what is dmesg, anyway?} about eth0 scattered around amongst all the other torrent??

Regards,

lutha

dmesg is your boot messages - very handy; try "man dmesg"
As for the networking, that is more black magic than science.

Sorry I can't help - I've just got network issues of my own

sorry but it *might* matter ! The PC's configured with static IP won't need the dhcp service, so they will wotk fine whether it's running or not. On the other hand, a new PC, connected to the same network, and using dhcp has a chance to get an IP that is already used statically by another machine, unless the dhcp scope was chosen to leave out the static IP's. This would result in conflicting IP's on the network, with somewhat unpredictable (but usually bad) results.

Back to your main concerns :

- first ensure that the router's dhcp server is running
- boot with knoppix
- check your network config the right way, and not with your web browser, that is, open a terminal, and type
- does eth0 have a IP addres ? If not, something is wrong with the dhcp server, probably
- if it does have an IP, check it is on the same segment (address and subnet mask) as the other machines; if not you can change it on the fly with ifconfig (see man ifconfig)
- try pinging (by IP address) the other machines, the router.

If it works but you still cannot connect with a browser, then you must check the default gateway setting (should be your router), and the access restrictions on the router...

Aware this is not an all-figured out solution, I try to bring you hope... Thinking of it, laptops sometimes have weird chipset ethernet cards, it took me some time to get my Acer travelmate to work with Fedora, because the bm440 ethercard had not its driver in the distro install...

by the way, goofing around with powerful networking commands (or unadapted drivers) may cause funny parameter values to be stored permanently in the non volatile memory of the ethercards... Guess that' what happened...

Okay, thanks for your input.Hope they get resolved nicely

Kind regards,

lutha

cidrolin, thank you so much for this nice and juicy reply!
I guess I might have somehow put some stuff into the ethernet card's memory.

In the interim, my fantastic solution of post #2 turned out to be not that fantastic:
the LAN hub my laptop was plugged in to did not show an LED light on wneh I plugged in the laptop,
and this was very, *very* frustrating!

I eventually solved it by:
1. booting with knoppix
2. messing around with netcardconfig
3. rebooting from knoppix, into knoppix
4. messing around in general, quite briefly
5, booting into xp.

And I'm writing this now from said laptop, using xp.

I also bought Linux for Dummies today, (well, my dad bought it for me ), and it comes with RedHat 8.
So to keep myself busy in the next few days, I'm trying to dual-boot this laptop, to use both xp and RH.
I don't know if/when I'll get back to knoppix; I only tried it mainly to see how linux feels, although as a
very newcomer I can't say that I have really experienced it properly...

cidrolin, again, thank you so much for your enlightening post; it's really a great resource for me...

Kind regards,

lutha

btw, my travelmate runs XP and FC2 as dual boot really fine (after fiddling a little as I said).

Just be aware that there is an issue with installing a linux after xp for a dual boot system, because xp does not partition properly the hdd; occasionally it makes xp unavailable after Linux install. This problem is fully recoverable, but you should document *before* you start installing Linux.