Help needed with networking in Debian

[Faust]

Ok I have been having some network troubles after a kernel compile.

I decided to recompile so that I could install the new nvidia drivers without downloading the kernel headers.  Also it gives me practice for when kernel 2.6.0 arrives.  

Could any Linux gurus help me re-establish proper networking?  (The actual questions are right at the bottom.)

My relevant machine details:

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Some relevant lines from my kernel configuration, edited for brevity (followed by comments):

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Now initially I cannot get to the network at all as this shows:

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(150.203.110.1 is my gateway by the way.)

Now this isn't a problem with the card as it runs fine under my old kernel and "other" Operating Systems.

(The card is fully Linux compatible by the way, I bought the only one in the store which had "Linux support" written on front of it - and it worked fine before the recompile.)

I check to see if maybe the kernel hasn't modprobed the card by doing "cat /proc/pci":

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I have also seen something like:

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flash by in the boot process.

After a long time I worked out that I should do an "ifconfig eth0" which indicates that I have no IP address nor netmask.

I am on a DHCP dynamic IP so I figure I should try and find a way to reget my IP, but the best thing I can find is dhclient.

So I do "dhclient eth0" as root and get no output, but upon re-pinging 150.203.110.1 there is no change.  I re-check my IP and find I still don't have one.

I then do:

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So now I at least have an IP and netmask even if my admin will be upset at me for not using DHCP.

I re-ping 150.203.110.1 and I get normal output.  (As in the ping is succesful.)

But when I ping an actual domain name I get "unknown host":

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So I still have no DNS, even though I am on the network.

My questions:

1:What have I done wrong in the recompile process?  (Do I need to recompile "# CONFIG_IP_PNP_BOOTP" in?)

2:How do I set up my computer for full DHCP assignment?  (Preferably on boot instead of by hand.)

3:If I am stuck with manual IP assignment (which will mean having to boot into Windows to find an unused IP address - ie the one assigned to my Windows box) then can I just shove the dns' IP address into /etc/hosts.conf?  What would the formatting of that be?

[Faust]

Yes I have done man DHCP/man DNS etcetera.

[KernelPanic]

Did you choose kernel compile options from scratch or use the previous .config as a template?

[Faust]

I think from scratch, I didn't think I had a loadable kernel config available.

The kernel config procedure was:

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If I recompile again how do I load up the config for my previous kernel?

[KernelPanic]

Before 'make xconfig' do 'cp /boot/config-2.4.xx .config'

[Faust]

Ok thanks Tux cool.  I'll get back to you with how it goes.  

[Faust]

Woohoo!  It worked!  Obviously newbie me just did not set the right option in the kernel compile procedure, but now I know how to use the previous compiles options so all good.  Thankyou very much Tux!