Ok, my friend just gave me a Dell Dimension XPS R450 running Mandrake 10 with a KDE3 interface. It has a 3Com 3c905 100BaseTX [Boomerang] ethernet card connected to a router on my network, which is connected to my modem. When I go to the network & internet configuration in the mandrake control center, I configure a new connection for my card, and set it up on LAN with DHCP. I then type in my DCHP address (which i think I'm confused with.. could someone give me an example? would it be 192.169.0.1?) After that, I configure my 3 DNS servers; however, when i try to connect or ping my router or yahoo.com, I get 'unknown host'...

A while back I was searching through the board for the same answer, and there was a post somewhere which had some kind of command to type in and it started working; however, i lost the page. Are there any commands that would help me get online? I'm sure I'm probably not being descriptive enough, but any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks a ton for your help

I don't know Mandrake very well, but it sounds like you haven't set up the routing information to the outside world:

You'll need to set up a default gateway:
(where "router" is the name or IP address of your router)

If that doesn't work, you'll need the output of the command to diagnose the problem any further.

— Robert J. Lee

Ok, so when I type I get no error. However, I still cannot ping or reach sites via my web browser. When I type in I end up with:

Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:60:97:AF:FE:CD
inet6 addr: fe80::260:97ff:feaf:fecd/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX Packets:5633 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:40 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txquenuelen:1000
RX bytes:1839168 (1.7 Mb) TX bytes:3024 (2.9 Kb)
Interrupt:10 Base address:0x1000

Ok, I found something sort of interesting... I decided to uninstall all of the configurations that I previously configured, and when i tried to uninstall eth0 it said "RTNETLINK answers: no such device or address" [FAILED]

So I go to install a new connection in drakconf, I choose LAN, I select my 3com 3c905 ethernet card to configure, i choose Automatic IP (DHCP), i type in 192.168.0.1 for my DHCP hostname (I'm not sure if this is correct.. it is the address of my router.. ) then I finished the configuration.
In the background the konsole said:
Shutting down interface eth0: [ok]
Setting network parameters: [ok]
Bringing up loopback interface: [ok]
Bringing up interface eth0: [FAILED]

why's it failing?

The DHCP hostname is the name of your computer, from which the DHCP server works out the IP address to give you. Usually, you want to type in the hostname here; I doubt the router IP address would work.

Also, you will of course need to be running at least one DHCP server on the LAN. DHCP works on broadcast ethernet (if I remember correctly), so you don't need to know the IP address of anything to get it working.

— Robert J. Lee

I'm having the same problems... I'm running Mandrake 9.1 on a P2 233 with 160 MB of RAM. I recently got a Linksys Router and I was able to get it online by typing 'pump' but I can't get it working with the programs I had it working with before I got the router. Any suggestions? I have DSL.

I ended up solving my problem of bringing up the eth0 interface. First I uninstalled all previous connections I tried to configure. Then I went into the konsole and typed This then enabled me to ping my router, but I couldn't reach any webpages. So after that it was just a matter of setting up a new connection without DCHP, and the right DNS servers, and bam.. It worked Thanks a ton for all your help guys, everyone here appreciates it.

i'm experiancing the same problem and i'm such a n00b it hurts. is there anyway you could breakdown how to get it working any more...?

Ok, there are some terms being tossed around here that need defined.

DHCP is a method of one machine (the server) to automatically hand IP addresses to the other machines on your network. This is nice in that you do not need to worry about addressing each new machine that gets plugged into your network (think when you fiend comes over and wants to browse the internet). When using DHCP, you seldom have to configure anything on your clients.

The Default GW command tells your client machine how to get out of your network. This is most often used by a machine to find its way to the internet. Since your machines need that Default Gateway, you do NOT want your computer/router acting as your Default Gateway to use DHCP for its LAN address. Think of it this way, each time you are in a house the door to get out moves on you. That's what it could be like with your Default Gateway using a DHCP address.

DNS is what allows your network to turn LinuxQuestions.org into an IP address that can be found on the internet. It doesn't look like their were any troubles with DNS, so I won't spend much time on it other than to say the settings are available from your ISP or you can even run your own DNS server.

IP addresses can be simple or complex. For most home networks it is fine to keep them VERY simple. Most home networks use the 192.168.0.X network. What you are going to want to do is pick any address on the 192.168.0.X network where X is 1-254. Make that address static (NOT DHCP) on whatever is being used as your gateway. Now, on your other machines you have a choice. You can set them up staticaly like you did with your Default Gateway, but if you do this you MUST also give your clients the address of that Default Gateway and your DNS servers. If you choose to address your clients using DHCP you must have a DHCP server running on your network. Most home broadband routers can act as a DHCP server, Linux can run a DHCP server, and Windows can act as a server either through ICS (2000 Pro, XP, 98 ) or as a full fledged server (Server 2003, 2000 Server, NT4). No matter what you run for your DHCP server, you must configure it to hand out your Default Gateway and DNS or your clients will not be able to get to the internet.

I know it sounds very complex; however, it's not all that bad once you break it down.

I got mine working finally but now for some reason Mozilla freezes up when I try and type a URL... Any idea about that?

I'd guess it's a DNS issue. If you ping yahoo.com does your system convert it to an IP address?

MrKnisely