Click to See Complete Forum and Search --> : Fedora will not access DHCP server


trevorsmith
11-23-2003, 12:38 PM
I have had the same hardware and installed various versions of (red hat) linux many times over the past years. It has always autodetected all my hardware and autoconnected to my Internet provider. Originally my local cable company using DHCP then my local phone company (ADSL) also using DHCP. At no time did I ever configure any networking, I just told whatever version of red hat to use DHCP and we were off.

I hadn't been using linux much but now I'm enrolled in computer science and wanted to stop using Win2k so thought I'd install a newer version of everything but suddenly I have no ability to connect to the network. Again, no hardware has changed -- except I did install 256 meg more RAM. The ADSL "modem" has remained connected, the nic is the same, everything is exactly as it was, where it was. Win2k continues to access my ADSL connection 100% of the time.

I installed Fedora core 1 and, as usual, the installation was flawless -- except after install, there is no connection to the DHCP server. At boot it says 'bringing up eth0...' then a line about failing to get ip settings or something. Trying to get eth0 to work after boot is similarly useless. It waits for approx 1 minute each time then says "failed".

I have reinstalled 6 or 7 times with different strategies, but no different results. I tried a SuSE network install, but it also fails to get any sort of connection (but that may be because I have no idea what "parameters", if any, are needed for the nic.

Interestingly, I tried reinstalling Red Hat 7.2 and it did not set up my nic properly but this is NOT the problem with Fedora and SuSE. BOTH are identifying my nic properly and fedora, at least, installs the "proper" driver. The nic is a D-Link but it has always been identified as a DEC 21x4x based card. I even took the damn thing out to read the chip numbers to make sure I wasn't remembering it wrong. (And I *wasn't* remembering wrong.)

So I "rebooted" the "modem" by unplugging it, hoping to get new IP leases, or whatever. No change. Win2k still works perfectly, linux still fails to contact anything when first attempting to find the dhcp server.

btw, l0 works fine (i can ping 127.0.0.1).

there seems to be no dhcpcd or pump on fedora, but i did find that dhclient works from the terminal but that has the same results as attempting to use the graphical interface to "start" eth0. Except with dhclient I get many lines of output while the minute elapses and before I get the error saying no DHCP offers were received. Basically it says it's sending a request, then another, then another, etc. No response, then it times out.

btw, Win2k (and OS/2 before it, and various red hats before it) never wait(ed) any amount of time to get their DHCP IPs. It happens in a few seconds, not in a minute or more.

ifconfig shows everything "working. There is an entry for l0 and one for eth0 with all kinds of info for each, but no IP for eth0 (of course). I'm going on memory here since this has been an oddysey for 3 days and the only net connection I have is from win2k.

I read somewhere there was some bug and "fix" about requiring a hostname of *any* kind to get eth0 working but I tried that and it changed nothing. (In fact, the symptoms I read about didn't seem to be happening on my machine, but I thought I'd try anyway.)

I saw on my win2k system the IRQ of the network card was 9 but fedora was trying to say it was 10 so I tried to change it to 9 to see what would happen but nothing did. I'm not really sure how to change an IRQ. I just went to the nic entry in some networking tool in the Gnome gui somewhere and changed the drop down list for the nic's IRQ from "unknown" to "9" and rebooted. no joy.

I read some networking howto and got some vague ideas about things to try but none did anything.

I know I'm not providing much technical detail here but I can't remember some and don't know what all would be needed to diagnose anyway.

So, summary:

- the nic is recognized and a driver is installed and it appears to work.
- the adsl 'modem' works for sure since Win2k continues to connect
- the attempt to find the dhcp server at my phone company and get an ip address for eth0 fails 100% of the time in linux

Question:

where do I look next? What do I try and how do I try it? What information do I try to extract from those attempts? How do I apply that information (if acquired) to fix this damn thing?

Thanks for the patience.

trevorsmith
11-23-2003, 12:57 PM
Hmmm... maybe I should have posted this in the networking forum? Oops! I won't repost it now that it's up I guess but sorry if it's inappropriately placed.

harrysholycows
11-23-2003, 09:25 PM
I do not know who your DSL provider is, but my broadband provider required me to instal software which identifies me to their network. When I added a second linux box, it would not work (as you described it). The only thing that I could get to work was pump. I suggest you download it on your windows box, and save it to a disk. It will fit on a floppy.

trevorsmith
11-23-2003, 09:56 PM
I'll give it a try, but I doubt that's the problem. I have an "older" service from my ISP (Aliant, in Nova Scotia, Canada) which is the "always on" variety. It's not pppoe and there is no need to log in or provide any other identification in Win2k, nor was there ever in Linux.

harrysholycows
11-23-2003, 11:36 PM
Are you sure that your machine is recognizing your ethernet card? Can you see the mac address of the card when you "ifconfig"? If all you can see is an ip address, but do not see any hex address for your nic card, then you are not seeing your nic card?? Someone else might want to explain if i am right, but i think you would get an eth0 or lo of 127.0.0.1 even if you do not have a nic installed or if you have not requested an ip address from the dhcp server. One of the nice things about pump is it recognizes everything automatically and sends the request automatically.

Some things to try (sorry that I do not know that much more than pump):

ifconfig eth0 up or ifconfig eth0 - up //that should bring up the ethernet card to work.

I did some quick searching and found the following (appears you need a dhcp client on your machine for the ifconfig to work):

On Unix and Linux, it is necessary to start a DHCP client. Some of the most common clients are dhcpcd, pump, and dhclient. You can determine which client is installed on your computer by typing whereis clientname, such as "whereis dhcpcd". If a client is installed it will return the clientname followed by the directory it is installed in.
To start dhcpcd type "dhcpcd -n -H eth0".
To start pumpd type "pump -i eth0 -h hostname".
To start dhclient type "dhclient fxp0".

Performing ifconfig -a with no options will show the interface's new settings and should list it's new IP address as assigned by DHCP. If it appears that the computer has gotten an IP address, you may wish to place the command you used in step 2 into a startup file such as rc.local so that the interface gets an IP address every time the computer is started. Otherwise you will have to type the command each time the computer restarts.

trevorsmith
11-24-2003, 12:42 AM
Thanks for the input. I'm not 100% sure the machine is recognizing the card. I had thought so but... This is what I get when I "ifconfig -a":

[root@localhost root]# ifconfig -a
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:80:C8:3F:C1:7F
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:24 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:48
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:10 Base address:0x2000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:2018 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2018 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:140172 (136.8 Kb) TX bytes:140172 (136.8 Kb)

I assume that the HWaddr shown is the "mac address" you're referring to. There is no IP address shown that I can see.

I do not appear to have pump or dhcpcd on my machine (neither red hat 9, nor fedora core 1 appear to install either of them) but every install I've done has included dhcpclient.

You wrote:

To start dhclient type "dhclient fxp0".

I didn't include the "fxp0" bit, and I'm not sure what that is. A literal? Or am I meant to substitute something for that? I just did "dhclient" and this is the result:

[root@localhost root]# dhclient
Internet Software Consortium DHCP Client V3.0pl1
Copyright 1995-2001 Internet Software Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/products/DHCP

Listening on LPF/eth0/00:80:c8:3f:c1:7f
Sending on LPF/eth0/00:80:c8:3f:c1:7f
Listening on LPF/lo/
Sending on LPF/lo/
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on lo to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3
DHCPDISCOVER on lo to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 15
DHCPDISCOVER on lo to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 21
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 20
DHCPDISCOVER on lo to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
DHCPDISCOVER on lo to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 10
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.


Any ideas? Any light shed by the above results?

harrysholycows
11-24-2003, 01:54 AM
Two things I can think of. 1) Do you have a router in your home. Some routers will not allow a broadcast to every machine (the 255.255.255.255). I doubt that is the problem, but if you connect it directly to the modem, that might be something to try. 2) Could your nic card be bad? Have you used that machine with any other OS to get on the web?

This has me stumpped. I hope someone else can help you more than I have.

trevorsmith
11-24-2003, 10:27 AM
I have no router in the house. Just one computer, one NIC in it, connected directly to the adsl modem, which is connected directly to the phone jack.

The NIC card is the same one I've had for 7+ yrs, and it's still in the same slot. It continues to work perfectly in Win2K as it has done for 4 yrs. I'm using it right now. :-(

I didn't change anything in the computer, except to add more RAM. I suppose I'm going to have to take the RAM back out, drop back to 128 meg and try it, just to make sure that's not the problem. It seems ludicrous, but...

trevorsmith
11-26-2003, 04:28 AM
For all those that offered help getting fedora to access my adsl
service:

I ran out of other ideas so I popped in to Cellar and bought the
cheapest NIC they had. I stuck it in, booted to RH7.2, Kudzu detected
and configured the card, the boot continued and... to my delight, my
nasty little adsl modem started blinking and eth0 WAS BROUGHT UP! And
the heavens parted and there was light at last and the sound of angels
singing...

Break out the Beethoven, I feel an Ode to Joy coming on. :-)

What was "wrong" with the old NIC? Who knows? Not me, nor will I likely
ever know. Shrug.

Many thanks to everyone who offered suggestions, all of which helped me
learn just a little more about many things that may help me at some
later date.