[SOLVED] PCLinuxOS & WinXP issues

[donaldhh]

Greeting All Experts,
  First post here regarding Networking problems. I just installed PCLOS on Thinkpad T43p on USB HDD. Trying to get NIC to connect. All OK there, network up, but no connection to Internet. Firefox page not found error. I used Open DNS settings as suggested by others, still no WWW. Unknowingly, my wife's laptop on Vista disconnects from the Internet with this setup. Also have a desktop with hard wired Cat5 connected and Thinkpad T23 wireless. Didn't get to do any terminal commands as my wife was doing something of importance. I then changed DNS to our default address setting and same result with disconnecting.
  Any thoughts and advice greatly appreciated, just dabbling with something new and exciting.
Sincerely,
Donald 

[Meemaw]

Welcome to PCLinuxOS!

I'm far from expert, but it might help others to know how you are trying to connect your computers... are they all wireless except for the desktop?  If so, which wireless card does each use?

(Just a start....)

 

[donaldhh]

Hi MeeMaw,
  Didn't think of those issues. Linux on T43p has Intel 2200 Mini PCI wireless card b/g/n compatible, T23 is wireless via Linksys WRT54G card in slot on side of laptop XP SP2. The Acer Vista laptop, Home Premium, is also internal wireless card, Atheros AR928X. Also PCLOS is most recent kernel and KDE desktop is also most recent. I hope others find this info helpful as well. Thanks for looking in.
Regards,
Donald 

[AS]

Hi donaldhh and welcome!

can you ping www.google.com ? if yes, try a different browser, else if no:
can you ping an external IP address (i.e. 8.8.8.8 which is google dns) ? If yes, there is a DNS setting problem, if no:
check the gateway configuration: from terminal try: route -n and post the result along with the output from ifconfig

AS

[donaldhh]

Thanks AS,
  I was hoping someone would look in and help with the commands needed. I will post back as soon as the Vista laptop is available with the results.
Thanks greatly,
Donald 

[Ramchu]

donaldhh,
I don't quite understand your setup.

Are you trying to connect through a Router, or are you trying to share a connection
through one of your computers ?
If it's through a router - Brand and Model please.

If its sharing a connection, what about firewall settings ?

[donaldhh]

Ramchu,
  Yes, desktop & laptops connections are through the router, Belkin FD5230-4 WPA/WPA2 password protected, Dynamic IP from Verizon ISP.
  Thanks for looking in.
Sincerely,
Donald   

[kernowyon]

Using WPA/WPA2 here with no problems, so I suspect settings.
I use two different systems - a basic Talk Talk ISp connection in the UK and my 4G trial via BT in the UK. Both work awesome with PCLOS!

Happy to look into your system.

[wharfhouse]

Hi Donald!

For my two pennerth worth, I've often scratched my head over this one... checked & rechecked security levels, passphrase, network SSID etc in Network Configuration.  I'm all wireless with no ethernet cable... one session I'm connected, another session I'm not and all the while it's the router itself that's lost it's link to the outside world and had to be rebooted... pc's can still log in to the router (as you say the 'network is up') doesn't mean to say there's a problem with PCLOS.  Can you log in to the router as an administator and manually install (if not already) the IP address of all the pc's (preferably from the one hard-wired)? or have I misinterpreted the problem? 

[ElCuervo]

It looks like everyone is assuming you did this, but I just have to ask: did you use  PCLinuxOS Control Center>Network & Internet>Set up a new network... for your setup?

As for OpenDNS, I just set my router use that and then set my computers to use the router as a gateway.

[donaldhh]

  Greetings wharfhouse and ElCuervo,
  I can log into the router and there is a configuration for the the desktop and 2 laptops with their IP addresses configured and fully functional. We've had the router up near 3 years and not a dropped conection ever, it's been flawless, it doesn't see the T43p though with PCLOS setup and I don't think there is a place to manually add this. I believe the router did this on its own.
  The second request by Elcuervo, no I did not set up a new connection in the Network Center as PCLOS saw our network and I just went from there. So I need to go back to the PCLOS on the T43p and try that setup and post the "ifconfig" and "route -n settings that AS said to do.
  Thanks again for the input and advice and hopefully soon I figure this out.
Sincerely,
Donald 

[ElCuervo]

Greetings wharfhouse and ElCuervo,
  I can log into the router and there is a configuration for the the desktop and 2 laptops with their IP addresses configured and fully functional. We've had the router up near 3 years and not a dropped conection ever, it's been flawless, it doesn't see the T43p though with PCLOS setup and I don't think there is a place to manually add this. I believe the router did this on its own.
  The second request by Elcuervo, no I did not set up a new connection in the Network Center as PCLOS saw our network and I just went from there. So I need to go back to the PCLOS on the T43p and try that setup and post the "ifconfig" and "route -n settings that AS said to do.
  Thanks again for the input and advice and hopefully soon I figure this out.
Sincerely,
Donald 

You can use AS's method but I strongly recommend trying the PCC way first. When you say "saw our network and I just went from there" it suggests strongly to me that while your connection was picked up, the necessary config files still need to be set up, for sure, and PCC is far and away the easiest way to do that, IMO. Really, it's just dead simple on any wireless connection I've ever set up and should be for you, too.

[donaldhh]

Greetings Again All,
  Reporting back after attempting all solutions from everyone. Went back to Network Center and started from scratch. Green check mark in lower right tray. Wireless up, no Internet. Here are some commands that hopefully someone can troubleshoot:

[donald@localhost ~]$ ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:15:58:0B:1F:4C 
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:16

eth1    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:16:6F:89:8F:34 
          inet addr:192.168.2.1  Bcast:192.168.2.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST ALLMULTI MULTICAST  MTU:1499  Metric:1
          RX packets:143 errors:64 dropped:68 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:118 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:24151 (23.5 KiB)  TX bytes:19070 (18.6 KiB)
          Interrupt:21 Base address:0x4000 Memory:b4002000-b4002fff

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:1090 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1090 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:99196 (96.8 KiB)  TX bytes:99196 (96.8 KiB)

[donald@localhost ~]$ route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
192.168.2.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0    U     0        0         0 eth1
169.254.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0       U     1004    0        0 eth1
127.0.0.0        0.0.0.0         255.0.0.0           U     0        0        0 lo
0.0.0.0           192.168.2.1     0.0.0.0           UG    35       0        0 eth1

[donald@localhost ~]$ netstat -r
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags   MSS Window  irtt Iface
192.168.2.0     *                 255.255.255.0    U         0      0         0   eth1
link-local         *                 255.255.0.0       U         0       0         0  eth1
loopback         *                 255.0.0.0          U         0       0         0   lo
default         linux.local         0.0.0.0            UG        0       0         0   eth1

[donald@localhost ~]$ hostname
localhost.localdomain

[donald@localhost ~]$ ping www.google.com
ping: unknown host www.google.com

[This is the Belkin Router Test]
[donald@localhost ~]$ ping 192.168.2.1
PING 192.168.2.1 (192.168.2.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.2.1: icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=0.043 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.2.1: icmp_req=2 ttl=64 time=0.044 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.2.1: icmp_req=3 ttl=64 time=0.057 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.2.1: icmp_req=4 ttl=64 time=0.046 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.2.1: icmp_req=5 ttl=64 time=0.041 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.2.1: icmp_req=6 ttl=64 time=0.041 ms
--- 192.168.2.1 ping statistics ---
6 packets transmitted, 6 received, 0% packet loss, time 4999ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.041/0.045/0.057/0.007 ms

  It seems the destination address of 192.168.2.0 is wrong maybe, shouldn't it be ...1 ?
Any help appreciated.
  Donald

[AS]

eth1    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:16:6F:89:8F:34 
          inet addr:192.168.2.1  Bcast:192.168.2.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST ALLMULTI MULTICAST  MTU:1499  Metric:1
          RX packets:143 errors:64 dropped:68 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:118 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:24151 (23.5 KiB)  TX bytes:19070 (18.6 KiB)
          Interrupt:21 Base address:0x4000 Memory:b4002000-b4002fff
[donald@localhost ~]$ route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
192.168.2.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0    U     0        0         0 eth1
169.254.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0       U     1004    0        0 eth1
127.0.0.0        0.0.0.0         255.0.0.0           U     0        0        0 lo
0.0.0.0           192.168.2.1     0.0.0.0           UG    35       0        0 eth1

The Destination is a "network or a subnet", not an "address", and is conventionally described as 192.168.2.0/255.255.255.0 or 192.168.2.0/24 and it appear to be correct.

what appear to be wrong in your setup is the gateway IP address, which really should be the IP address of your router.
But, if your router actually have the IP address 192.168.2.1, you need to assign a different IP address to your wireless card, always on the same subnet 192.168.2.0, which means an address included between the range 192.168.2.2 and 192.168.2.254.

(Substitute the IP addresses number accordingly to the IP address of your wireless router, here I have assumed 192.168.2.1)

Alternatively, if you wireless router act as DHCP server (usually they do), you can configure your card to automatically obtain an IP address from the DHCP server, in this case the configuration of the address, netmask and gateway will be fully automatic.

Idem about DNS, can be set up manually, or automatically obtained from the wireless router, which act also as DNS server.

Just to clarify the meaning of the routing table:
all packets whose destination is the network 192.168.2.0/24 will be forwarded to the gateway 0.0.0.0, in turn, all IP packets whose destination is the network 0.0.0.0 will be forwarded to the gateway 192.168.2.1, which should be your router, from there they will be forwarded to the internet.

[Old-Polack]

donaldhh:

You appear to have your computer using the same internal IP address as your router. They need to be different.

Example:

From my computer;

[root@fatman ~]# ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1F:D0:BD:54:7D  
          inet addr:192.168.1.99  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0         <-- Correct IP for computer
          inet6 addr: fe80::21f:d0ff:febd:547d/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1492  Metric:1
          RX packets:101353 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:100004 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:83802332 (79.9 MiB)  TX bytes:17470321 (16.6 MiB)
          Interrupt:42 Base address:0x8000

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:144 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:144 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:7952 (7.7 KiB)  TX bytes:7952 (7.7 KiB)

[root@fatman ~]# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
192.168.1.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     5      0        0 eth0
169.254.0.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.0.0     U     5      0        0 eth0
127.0.0.0       0.0.0.0         255.0.0.0       U     0      0        0 lo
0.0.0.0         192.168.1.1     0.0.0.0         UG    5      0        0 eth0         <-- Correct IP for Router