Linux (Slax/BT) help

[Desidero]

Alright, I tried registering on the forums at the distro site to ask the question, but there is a 3 day waiting period to post it, so I figured I'd ask you guys.

I just got BT3 beta yesterday to play around with the various tools that it comes with... I'm pretty new to Linux, but I pick up a lot of information in the guides very quickly.

When I run the live CD (haven't installed to my HD yet - it's made to be operable as just a live CD anyway), it automatically sets up everything to connect to the web. I have both a wireless and a wired router in my computer. When I go through the regular steps, I can get the wireless connection working without a problem. However, when I try to connect to the web with my wired card (I have a direct connection in my apartment to a building T1 network), it simply doesn't work. DHCP gets all the proper information (IP/Subnet Mask/Gateway/DNS/DHCP server are all identical to the ones I have right now in Windows), but it just won't seem to bring up the internet. I've gone through the forums, the wikis, tried a ton of stuff to get it working... but it just won't seem to work.

ifconfig -a brings up eth0 (wired), eth1 (wireless), lo (loopback)

eth0 is "UP" and all the proper ip/etc info shows up in ifconfig eth0. ifconfig eth0 also shows that there are quite a few packets sent, so it's obviously doing something.

I've tried switching eth1 and lo to UP and DOWN, tried deleting my dhcp information and reacquiring it with dhcpcd eth0, put in all sorts of goofy commands, tried pinging various things... I don't know what else to do. Is there something simple I might have missed? When I enable the wireless card and connect to a router, it shows up in my system tray. When my wired card is enabled, nothing happens.

Any help you guys could give would be very much appreciated! Let me know if there's any other info that would be helpful.

[Rhuobhe]

This reminds me of my "getting into linux" phase a few years ago.

try solaris

you can also get a sun workstations for 60 days free Sun Desktops & Workstations

[Suineg]

Look into "iwconfig" iirc.

[Desidero]

That's for wireless stuff.

[Araex]

Just throwing some basic ideas out...

from ifconfig's output, are there packets going thru both directions? (RX and TX packets), any errors, dropped packets, etc?

you also tried pinging by IP and not hostnames, right?

[Suineg]

Oops I transposed it in my head that he was saying wireless when he was saying wired.

[Desidero]

RX and TX packets are showing up, none dropped. Some errors.

Screenshot of network stuff:

[Araex]

Those error rates are way too high for a wired connection. Next, look thru the output of 'dmesg' and /var/log/message, see if you find any errors there.

[Desidero]

Dmesg output.txt is self explanatory...
messages.txt is from /var/log/message

There are errors, but it's various things all over the place. I'm not sure exactly what I'm looking for. I know there were some messages about broadcom, but that's my wireless NIC, not wired.

[Araex]

I didn't see any specific error messages about eth0. What I'd suggest you try next is to bring down your wireless interface, and see if those errors from bcm43xx were causing conflicts, and then run dhcpcd on eth0 again. So try these:

# ifconfig eth1 down
# rmmod -f bcm43xx
# dhcpcd eth0

[Desidero]

Still no luck. It actually says that it doesn't know what bcm43xx is when I try to remove it.

I tried installing the USB (more fleshed-out) version to my HD and that didn't help either. Didn't think it would, but it was worth a shot.

[Araex]

This is just your home network, right? So there's no firewall or anything that could be blocking you?

The only thing I can think of is physical error -- either bad ethernet cable, or bad port on your router. Even though Windows works fine on it, you should try changing cable/port.

Another thing you can try is to run tcpdump while pinging your router. Here's the command:

# tcpdump -X -s0 host [ip_of_your_router]

[LikeWow!]

I would try a live CD of a different distro to hold you over. Who knows what's wrong in their beta?

[Desidero]

Tried a different cable, etc. Still no luck. Tried BT version 2 (Final) instead of 3 beta and same thing happened.

Here's a log of tcpdump:

[Desidero]

Good + bad news update!

Strange things are happening. I was playing around with the GRUB boot loader to get BT working with that (was using the windows boot loader pointed at lilo.mbr before) and a few things have changed. The first time I successfully loaded via GRUB, the internet actually worked. I was going to come and post here, but after clicking login on the 3rd website I went to, it suddenly stopped working. I haven't been able to recreate this situation after rebooting, etc. I even tried reinstalling BT and running it from GRUB in an attempt to recreate the scenario.

Also, every time BT loads up now, the little computer icon for my eth0 (wired) connection shows up in the system tray, but goes away within 1-3 seconds. I don't recall if it was there the time that my internet worked, sadly. I was excited about it working after messing around for 2 days trying to figure it out.

Another strange thing is that the network connection viewer isn't showing eth0 even when it's set to "UP" in ifconfig now. It always used to, despite not working.

Other than that, things are as they were. IP info comes up, but no connection.


---------------------

*edit* I'm pretty sure what's happening is the OS is getting my wired card all set up first. Once that's done, it tries to get the wireless connection going at the same time, which causes conflicts. I'll have to look around Google to see if there's a way to make the startup process avoid auto-connecting to both sources. If you know what to edit off the top of your head, it'd be very helpful.