Networking :: nothing inbound (including ping), hmmm?

Hey guys,

Just want to start with thanks for everybody's help.

My situation:
Installed DSL HDinstall on:
AST Ascentia M5230K, 233MHz, 96MB
using a Realtek 8139 Generic Card 10/100.

Have tested card, on another laptop (win2k) in same setting with the same router configuration, the card and router configuration work fine. When I use the netcardconfig with the AST, and try DHCP, the router recognizes the laptop asking for an address and the router assigns an address to the laptop.

But, the laptop fails in the DHCP attempt on its end (it doesn't read any response from the router). I then manually configure the IP address, mask, etc. DSL accepts the configuartion, but pinging doesn't work afterward. ifconfig shows no packets recieved during the entire situation.

My thoughts: 1) I have the software end of the netowrking misconfigured in Linux (I new to this OS so I'm blind on this one). 2) Because it's a generic card, the pre-installed driver doesn't work ( I doubt this one since the guts are the same in both, and that's what I thought the drivers are written for).

Please help, I've been banging my head on this one.

Thanks again

Hmm...

If you can't ping anything (including the raw numerical IP addresses) including your router itself, then I suspect that your network card driver is incorrect.

The DHCP request in your router could be a just a record of the previous (Win 2000) DHCP attempt and not the new DSL DHCP attempt.

If so, try opening an xterminal window and type:

lsmod | more

to see the name of the network driver module.

It should be something like

rtl8139

or

rtl8139too

I have the '8139too' in the list and also two child modules - 'mii' and 'crc32'.

I don't think it is a shadow from the win2k because I added the card to the MAC address pool (disabled presently) for my router when I first hooked up the card and that was when it recieved the address. I only tested the card afterwards on a spearate system.

My network is 192.169.17.xxx based, are there any firewall restrictions for networks outside the 192.168.xxx.xxx range?

One other thing to note,

I originally tried booting the DSL into an old Compaq Armada 1530DM (133MHz, 80 MB), with screen resolution issues resultig (colors are all messed when I do get it up).

I got the networking to be recognized, but the same problem exists there.

BUT I loaded DSL into a newer Sony Vaio XG-19 (650 MHz, 256MB) everything works perfectly, networking and all.

This incidently is the laptop I used to 'test' the card and router configuartion after it didn't work on the AST.

Does this mean there could be a PCMCIA issue with the two other laptops?

Or is it possible that the same driver works with some laptops, but not with others?

Can a card just selectivly not work with some configurations even if it has the right drivers?

Note:
same DSL CD is used for all experiments
same card, same router config

Thanks again for all the help guys

Quote (magnumjones @ July 30 2005,13:33)

Does this mean there could be a PCMCIA issue with the two other laptops?

Or is it possible that the same driver works with some laptops, but not with others?

Can a card just selectivly not work with some configurations even if it has the right drivers?

Yes, yes, and yes

Getting a PCMCIA card recognized and its drivers loaded doesn't guarantee anything. Some cards (like network cards) are going to need system resources such as IRQs which can be in short supply on older systems. To make matters worse, the drivers need to know what system resources the card has been assigned and if they guess wrong, things won't work.

Another little wrinkle is that if your network card is a CardBus (32-bit) device it may not be compatible with older non-CardBus (16-bit) PCMCIA slots. I don't know anything about that particular card so I can't help you there.

You may be able to get more information if you boot DSL with the card removed. Once DSL is running, plug in the card, then open an Aterm and used the "dmesg" command to look for any error messages the kernel or driver may have spit out.

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