RH 8.0 & networking problems

[Ice-9]

Lo all,
I've been away for a while, real life kinda caught up with me, but I'm back now    

Now, I finally managed to get RH 8.0 on my main machine and there's a glitch   :confused:  
Everything works like a charm, except for my NIC's
When the OS boots it hangs for a few minutes on Eth0 and returns a red "FAILED", when I try to configure Eth0 after booting into KDE I can edit fine, it's recognized (Intel Pila 8460c3), I enter all the paramters like obtain IP address by DHCP, the DNS address, proxy server in Mozilla, etc ....
And then when I click "activate" it hangs for a while and says "cannot activate network device Eth0"??????

Now I looked into every option I could find and found nothing wrong (this is the first distro that doesn't le me go online)      

What I did see is that the firewall is on High by default and no matter hwo many times I set it to medium or even disable it, when I go back to check it's back on High security!!
Could that be my problem?
Do I have to re-install and pay special attention not to configure my Nic's during setup?
Is there any config I could edit to set my firewall rules to medium?

Thanks for the help.

[voidmain]

Yes it could. It could be blocking DHCP. You can turn if off (temporarily) to see if that is the problem:

# service stop iptables

or permanantly:

# chkconfig iptables off
# service stop iptables

You can check your firewall rules in /etc/sysconfig/iptables configuration file.

References:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-8.0-Manual/custom-guide/ch-basic-firewall.html
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-8.0-Manual/security-guide/ch-fw.html#S1-FIREWALL-IPT

You might also want to watch the end of your system log while trying to bring up the interface:

# tail -f /var/log/messages

[ November 25, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[Ice-9]

Thanks for helping void main, but Jezus f*cking Christ, what is this shit?
I sure didn't run into these problems on my PII 400 otherwise I never would've installed it!

# service stop iptables
command not found (user & root)

I can edit my iptables configuration file but I can't post it because I have no access, I can't print it out because my epson C70 (which was apparently configured fine) is only listed as generic printer and refuses to print.
My Windows partitions are nowhere to be found and  I can't seem to add them.

I mean, SuSE had it's imperfections, but I was able to connect to the Internet immediately and browse my lan, Windows partitions had icons on the desktop and my printer worked flawlessly .....

I must be doing something wrong but my newbie ass surely doesn't know what ....
The iptables config file had al lot of REJECT at the end of almost every line.
Think I'm gonna try a re-install.

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by Ice9:
# service stop iptables
command not found (user & root)

Did you "su -" or just "su"? If you don't "su -" it will not load root's profile, which means the /sbin and /usr/sbin directories will not be in your path. This is true on all Linux and UNIX systems I have used. But you could still use the full path /sbin/service and /sbin/chkconfig regardless (you still have to be root). By the way, there's a graphical utility for starting, stopping, disabling, enabling services. I just thought you were a little more familiar with this stuff so I skipped the GUI crap which I hate. The graphical menu is "Server Settings">>"Services". This will prompt you for root's password if you are not already root.

I don't know what to tell you on the rest other than I must be the luckiest son of a bitch on the face of the earth because I don't have any problems like this.                I never install the firewall at install time on any distro because I like to go through the firewall configuration and set it up *exactly* like I want. Nah, I'm lying, I have a hardware firewall (Netscreen) so I usually don't even turn on the firewall on my home machines, other than for testing, and I have a RedHat 6.2 box acting as a secondary firewall/gateway, behind the Netscreen, using ipchains. I have multiple layers of security  for VPN into other companies.

BTW, there's a graphical tool to look at your system logs as well. It's "System Tools">>"System Logs". Filter on "eth0" or "dhcp" in the "System Log".

[ November 25, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[Ice-9]

I didn't su- so that's probably why it returned "command not found"    
So I might try it again, but I went through the GUI to configure the firewall, it didn't change a thing.
And btw I checked with a friend of mine, his firewall is on High security too, and he too is on cable so I guess that's not where the problem resides.
Anyway, I'm off trying a little more and then maybe reinstall.
Thanks heaps for your patience void main  

[voidmain]

Just make sure you do a "su -" and not an "su-" (there needs to be a space in there). Did you look at your system log? If there is a problem with the driver or other error messages you will find it there.  You might also try and bring the interface up on the command line and see if there are any other messages there:

$ su -
# ifup eth0

[ November 25, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[Ice-9]

Found some stuff but it really doesn't say much to me    :confused:  
Here is the result of # tail -f /var/log/messages
[root@localhost root]# tail -f /var/log/messages
Nov 26 01:11:53 localhost dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port                                             67 interval 7
Nov 26 01:12:00 localhost dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port                                             67 interval 7
Nov 26 01:12:07 localhost dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port                                             67 interval 8
Nov 26 01:12:15 localhost dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port                                             67 interval 16
Nov 26 01:12:31 localhost dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port                                             67 interval 9
Nov 26 01:12:40 localhost dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port                                             67 interval 8
Nov 26 01:12:48 localhost dhclient: No DHCPOFFERS received.
Nov 26 01:13:05 localhost su(pam_unix)[1361]: session opened for user root by yc                                            (uid=500)
Nov 26 01:13:13 localhost gconfd (root-1109): GConf server is not in use, shutti                                            ng down.
Nov 26 01:13:13 localhost gconfd (root-1109): Exiting

And when I do ifup eth0 it says "configuration file for eth0 not found"

.....

Now I read that with Red Hat it was best not to configure Nic's at the install and do it afterwards.
It's a long shot but would that maybe help, if I wait until after the install completes and configure my firewall and Nic's then?

[ November 26, 2002: Message edited by: Ice9 ]

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by Ice9:
Nov 26 01:12:48 localhost dhclient: No DHCPOFFERS received.

This says your machine is trying to obtain an IP address via DHCP but is not getting a response from any DHCP server. Usually means the network card is not working, you have a problem with a cable, or there is a problem with the DHCP server.

Do you get a green link light on the device your ethernet card is plugged in to?

It appears that this card is a 100Mbps card only, is the device you are connecting it to capable of 100Mbps? I'm sure it is since you had it working before. You only have one card right?

 

quote:
And when I do ifup eth0 it says "configuration file for eth0 not found"

This is not good at all. This would indicate to me that "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0" is missing. That is where all of your settings go for eth0. It's what gets created when you configure your eth0 network interface. I find it hard to believe that it could be missing and yet it still knows that it's configured for DHCP.

 

quote:Now I read that with Red Hat it was best not to configure Nic's at the install and do it afterwards.

Not sure where you read that but I always set up the NIC at install time without trouble.

 

quote:
It's a long shot but would that maybe help, if I wait until after the install completes and configure my firewall and Nic's then?

I actually believe it may be a case of an unsupported NIC. I have searched for the last hour and this does not appear to be a very popular card. There are many many very popular Intel Cards but this thing doesn't seem to be one of them. I even found it on the Intel page.

The Intel support site has Linux drivers for many cards, this one is not listed. Does it show up in an "/sbin/lspci -v" command? I also looked through the kernel source and documentation and I don't see anything specific on it. I am guessing that it uses the eepro100 driver but like I said. No mention of this model. Here is a line from the eepro100.c:

MODULE_DESCRIPTION("Intel i82557/i82558/i82559 PCI EtherExpressPro driver");

Then you have the eepro driver for several 82595 chips and the EtherExpress Pro/10.

So then I searched all over RedHat HCL and this specific card was not listed anywhere. I also did a few Google searches. If you search for the model number only (8460c3) you get 2,400 hits. A bad sign compared to searching for something like 3c905 at 49,200 hits or 3c509 at 74,800 hits.

Believe it or not, this is a fairly reliable indicator as to how compatible your hardware is going to be. Sometimes it's not accurate but often times it is.

You don't have another card lying around do you?  

[ November 26, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[Ice-9]

quote: This says your machine is trying to obtain an IP address via DHCP but is not getting a response from any DHCP server. Usually means the network card is not working, you have a problem with a cable, or there is a problem with the DHCP server.

I don't think so, I rebooted WIndows several times and can connect to the net without any problem, in fact I've had the same Nic's for more than a year now, every distro I tried until now recognized the Nic's (Red Hat does too, they're listed properly when I try to configure them)

   

quote: This is not good at all. This would indicate to me that "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0" is missing. That is where all of your settings go for eth0. It's what gets created when you configure your eth0 network interface. I find it hard to believe that it could be missing and yet it still knows that it's configured for DHCP.

In fact the second time I tried it it simply said "unable to obtain Ip address for eth0"

   

quote: I actually believe it may be a case of an unsupported NIC. I have searched for the last hour and this does not appear to be a very popular card. There are many many very popular Intel Cards but this thing doesn't seem to be one of them. I even found it on the Intel page.  

Again, you might be right but I don't think so, I've had these Nic's (one 100Mbit and one 10/100Mbit) for more than a year and they worked with SuSE, Mandrake and Lycoris, immediately after install and without even having to enter DNS server addresses and stuff like that.

And I do have other Nic's lying around, but all of them are Intel Pila 8460 ....

[ November 26, 2002: Message edited by: Ice9 ]
Edit : typos

[ November 26, 2002: Message edited by: Ice9 ]

[voidmain]

Well now I don't know what to say. I didn't see any problem reports on RedHat's bugzilla either. What is the device your machine is connected directly to, a cable or DSL modem? If so, have you tried turning that off for around 1-5 minutes and see if it has any effect? Seems to me we've had very similar problems recenty on this site. Have you tried configuring it with a static IP address and pinging the address of the closest router? Take down the IP settings from your Windows side (ipconfig /all) and use those settings for configuring the card with a static address in RedHat.

[Ice-9]

The pc is connected to a Motorola Cable modem.
I didn't try to disconnect it, what would be the advantage of doing that? Clearing the cache?

Assigning a static IP address could do the trick though, my second nic activated without any problem when I assigned a fixed IP address to it
(192.168.1.1 on 255.255.255.0) but I can't try that until I get home tonight.

But then again, I receive a dynamic IP address from my provider, sometimes it stays for more than a week, other times it changes every couple of days, depending on the traffic, so that would leave me in the cold whenever the isp decides to change my ip wouldn't it?

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by Ice9:
The pc is connected to a Motorola Cable modem.
I didn't try to disconnect it, what would be the advantage of doing that? Clearing the cache?

Yes, the "arp cache". It maps MAC addresses to IP addresses. I see this type of problems on big routers from time to time as well. But on those you can give a command to clear the arp cache.

 

quote:
Assigning a static IP address could do the trick though, my second nic activated without any problem when I assigned a fixed IP address to it
(192.168.1.1 on 255.255.255.0) but I can't try that until I get home tonight.

Uh, 2nd NIC? I thought I asked if you had two. It is very possible that RedHat has the interface names eth0 and eth1 reversed from what you had in Mandrake and older RedHat. Also turn off iptables before messing with it again. And do try resetting your DSL modem.

 

quote:
But then again, I receive a dynamic IP address from my provider, sometimes it stays for more than a week, other times it changes every couple of days, depending on the traffic, so that would leave me in the cold whenever the isp decides to change my ip wouldn't it?

Nope. Once you get assigned an address it should no longer be a problem. Clearing the internal arp cache can fix this sort of problem (won't swear that it will fix *this* problem, but problems like it). And if none of this leads to a solution then I'm about pooped out on this one. I do believe if I had the machine in front of me I could figure it out in a minute or two. It *has* to be something simple we're overlooking.

[Ice-9]

quote: Uh, 2nd NIC? I thought I asked if you had two. It is very possible that RedHat has the interface names eth0 and eth1 reversed from what you had in Mandrake and older RedHat. Also turn off iptables before messing with it again. And do try resetting your DSL modem.

I messed around with this too, disabling Eth0 and trying to set up Eth1, same result, from the moment I set it to "Obtain ip through DHCP" I can't set it to active, once I assign a static ip to it, no prob.

 

quote: Nope. Once you get assigned an address it should no longer be a problem. Clearing the internal arp cache can fix this sort of problem (won't swear that it will fix *this* problem, but problems like it). And if none of this leads to a solution then I'm about pooped out on this one. I do believe if I had the machine in front of me I could figure it out in a minute or two. It *has* to be something simple we're overlooking.

Wait a minute, if I can catch my plane I could be there in about an hour or 12, if you can fix my machine I could be back in a little more than 30 hours I guess  

[voidmain]

Hey, I've been to Belgium, nice place. You could just fly me there. I would make a rare house call in this particular case.    One final question. You are positive that your provider uses DHCP and not PPPoE right?

[ November 26, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[Ice-9]

I thought PPPoE was for A(x)DSL only and cable always used DHCP?

And erm, just out of curiosity, what time is it right now where you live?
If you're in the same timezone than the server that hosts these forums ......