newbish needs eth0 help.

English Network/Internet
1

k, here’s the deal. i have recently adjusted to the idea that linux > apple > everything else > microsoft. it came as a huge surprise in the form of open suse 11.0 kde4.0.4 which i am now running. after attempting to connect to the interwebs via wired router and failing…
i should interject here that i know nothing about linux, command lines or networking…
i searched the forums for similar sob stories.

obviously i haven’t been able to resolve the issue, as i am here, requesting help.

just in case this helps:

mobo = gigabyte ga-m61p-s3

integrated lan = gigabyte ethernet card named by hardware probe as MCP61 (eth0)

ifconfig returns: #ifconfig

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1D:7D:93:B1:EB
inet6 addr: fe80::21d:7dff:fe93:bleb/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:285 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0
carrier:0
collisions:0 txqeuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0b) TX bytes:87993 (85.9kb)
Interrupt:23 Base address:0xe000

eth0eemaLink encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1D:7D:93:B1:EB
inet addr:192.168.0.107 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask
255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
Interrupt:23 Base address:0xe000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:148 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0
frame:0
TX packets:148 erros:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collision:0 txqeuelen:0
RX bytes:11200 (10.9kb) TX bytes:11200 (10.9kb)

so i don’t really know what most of that means. maybe this will be helpful…

route -n returns: #route -n
Kernel IP Routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref UseIfac
e
192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo

also hwinfo - -netcard returns:
#hwinfo --netcard
20: PCI 07.0: 0200 Ethernet controller
[Created at pci.310]
UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_10de_3ef
Unique ID: rBUF.Co2JF_zcRV2
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:07.0
SysFS BusID: 000:00:07.0
Hardware Class: network
Model: “nVidia MCP61 Ethernet”
Vendor: pci 0x10de “nVidia Corp”
Device: pci 0x03ef “MCP61 Ethernet”
SubVendor: pci 0x1458 “gigabyte tech”
SubDevice: pci 0xe000
Revision: 0xa2
Driver: “forcedeth”
Driver Modules: “forcedeth”
Device File: eth0
Memory Range: 0xf4104000-0xf4104fff (rw,non-prefetchable)
I/O Ports: 0xb800-0xb807
IRQ: 23 (373112 events)
HW address: 00:1d:7d:93:b1:eb
Link detected: yes
Module Alias: “pci:v000010DEd000003EFsv00001458sd0000E000bc06scB0i00”
Driver Info #0:
Driver Status: forcedeth is active
Driver Activation Cmd: “modprobe forcedeth”
Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active= unknown

thanks in advance for taking the time…

2

Well the only thing I can tell from that info is that it looks like your computer tried to get an address by DHCP as evidenced from the many transmitted bytes but absolutely nothing was received, not even a stray byte, as the received bytes are zero. It looks like some kind of driver problem. You might want to google a bit to see if anybody has had similar problems with this onboard NIC with any other Linux distro, whether some special options are required to be passed to the driver. That’s all I know.

PS: You’re sure the cable is good? Not CAT5 when you are supposed to use CAT5E or CAT6?

3

thanks ken, you were right on the money. bum cable. replaced it with a brand new and now i feel quite foolish for not having checked it before. lesson learned.

4

eemarken: could you just record what you did to get on to the internet, once the cable was good; with new folks starting on opensuse, it is useful surely for folks to record what works well

5

sure thing pdc_2

so what happened in my situation was just a case of bad ethernet cables. i installed opensuse11 from kde4 live cd. pretty standard as far as i can tell. first it loaded from the cd, then i installed (by clicking the icon that says install on the kde desktop) and everything went fine, detected all hardware etc. etc. but i couldnt establish a network connection. i knew this because when i opened a web browser it couldnt access the internet. also, in mycomputer (icon on kde desktop) it said unknown network status. after researching (i.e. reading similar cases here on opensuse forums) i was able to open the console (accomplished by clicking the bottom left icon in kde desktop or “start” from a windows users frame of reference, selecting applications, further selecting system, and then running terminal.

once in console, the following commands got me to where i could evaluate my ethernet problem. first, log in as root. this is done with the command su -
after su - it will ask for password. this would be whatever password you selected when installing opensuse.
next run diagnostic tools like ifconfig
route -n
hwinfo --netcard

i posted the output from these diagnostics and Ken was able to point out that my nic (network interface card) was sending packets but not receiving any back from the router. this is visible in my first post under ifconfig

that meant that it was either a case of faulty ethernet drivers for my nic, or that i had a bad cable. it turned out that it was the cable, which i should have swapped for a new one immediately, but i made things harder than they should be by checking the drivers, probing my hardware and searching for new drivers. after i realized that opensuse11 came with the most recent driver, i purchased a new cat5 ethernet cable and ran it from my router to my computer. and that’s the story so far.