Network Won't Connect

[MrNewbie]

I have two computers connected via an RJ45 cable. They are supposed to automatically connect to each other right? They have quite a few times but sometimes when I boot the machines the light to mean connected doesn't come on and in Win2k it says that the Network Cable has been unplugged. This also happens in linux but the light has came on when I booted into linux before. How are the network cards supposed to connect? Is there a way to force them to connect? It's really annoying that I have to boot both machines a few times just to get the light to come on so that they are connected... Is there something wrong?

[Ryeker]

Something is wrong. You have two computers connected with a single RJ45 cable? No hub? Are you using a crossover cable? Now, are the network cards installed properly on both computers? I've noticed that the LEDs on the network card won't lite up if it isn't properly installed in Linux.

[MrNewbie]

Yeah they're installed properly. How and when are the cards supposed to connect to each other? I have then connected like this:

Desktop EtherNet 10/100 Card ---RJ45 Cable--- Laptop PCMCIA EtherNet Card and sometimes when I boot the computers the light comes on and they're connected and reported as connected in Win2k.

[X_console]

I had the same setup as you once and the same problem. The problem turned out to be that I was using the wrong RJ45. Make sure you're using the one that doesn't require a HUB/switch in between.

[MrNewbie]

How would I know that?

[X_console]

You can't really tell just by looking at the cable. When you bought the cable the package should have said if it was a straight-through or crossover. If you're not sure, see if you can borrow a crossover cable from someone. Or you could always buy one, they're pretty cheap.

[jumpedintothefire]

On a straight cable all the colored wires are in the same order.

On a crossover cable wires 1-3,and 2-6 are reversed. like a null modem serial cable

[MrNewbie]

Ok thanks, I'll check. So which one would I need? Crossover or Stright?

[MrNewbie]

The cable is like this:

One one side:
Black/Brown, Red, Blue, then Green.

And on the other side:
Black/Brown, Green, Blue then Red.
What does that mean? Is it the right cable?

[jumpedintothefire]

use the straight with hubs and switches.
use the crossover between two computers only.
check out: http://www.bsninc.com/crossover.htm

[ 04 February 2001: Message edited by: jumpedintothefire ]

[MrNewbie]

So I DO have the right cable, good. But theres something really wrong as i cant access the files on either computer from the other one anymore, i suspect its because of some settings I've messed up. Are there any tutorials that you know of that step by step help you to set up such a network between win2k and win98se machines?

[jumpedintothefire]

Ok lets do this step by step:
step one is the nic seen by linux?

can you check /var/log/messages for something like:

Feb 1 23:56:01 sargent kernel: Adding Swap: 99784k swap-space (priority -1)
Feb 1 23:56:01 sargent kernel: ne.c:v1.10 9/23/94 Donald Becker (becker@cesdis
Feb 1 23:56:01 sargent kernel: NE*000 ethercard probe at 0x300: 00 00 e8 46 f0
Feb 1 23:56:01 sargent kernel: eth0: NE2000 found at 0x300, using IRQ 9.
Feb 1 23:56:02 sargent kernel: 3c59x.c:v0.99H 27May00 Donald Becker http://ces$
Feb 1 23:56:02 sargent kernel: eth1: 3Com 3c905 Boomerang 100baseTx at 0xff00,$
Feb 1 23:56:02 sargent kernel: 8K word-wide RAM 3:5 Rx:Tx split, autoselect/$
Feb 1 23:56:02 sargent kernel: MII transceiver found at address 24, status 7$
Feb 1 23:56:03 sargent kernel: Enabling bus-master transmits and whole-frame$
Feb 1 23:55:56 sargent inet: inetd startup succeeded

that is where the conf.modules file is read during bootup. Do you have an entry for your nic?

[MrNewbie]

Ok I ran dmesg (That does give the same things as the /var/log/message file right? It looks the same) Anyway:

Linux version 2.4.1 (root@debian) (gcc version 2.95.3 20010125 (prerelease)) #2 Sat Feb 3 20:00:02 GMT 2001
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 @ 0000000000000000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000400 @ 000000000009fc00 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000010000 @ 00000000000f0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000010000 @ 00000000ffff0000 (reserved)
BIOS-e820: 000000000fef0000 @ 0000000000100000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 000000000000d000 @ 000000000fff3000 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000003000 @ 000000000fff0000 (ACPI NVS)
On node 0 totalpages: 65520
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 61424 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=Linux ro root=305
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 801.452 MHz processor.
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 1599.07 BogoMIPS
Memory: 255892k/262080k available (794k kernel code, 5800k reserved, 268k data, 172k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Buffer-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
CPU: Before vendor init, caps: 0183f9ff c1c7f9ff 00000000, vendor = 2
CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line), D cache 64K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: L2 Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: After vendor init, caps: 0183f9ff c1c7f9ff 00000000 00000000
CPU: After generic, caps: 0183f9ff c1c7f9ff 00000000 00000000
CPU: Common caps: 0183f9ff c1c7f9ff 00000000 00000000
CPU: AMD Duron(tm) Processor stepping 00
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.37 (20001109) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfb160, last bus=1
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
Unknown bridge resource 0: assuming transparent
PCI: Using IRQ router VIA [1106/0686] at 00:14.0
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
DMI 2.3 present.
36 structures occupying 1125 bytes.
DMI table at 0x000F0800.
BIOS Vendor: Award Software International, Inc.
BIOS Version: 6.00 PG
BIOS Release: 10/05/2000
System Vendor: System Manufacturer .
Product Name: Product Name .
Version SYS-xxxxxx.
Serial Number Serial number xxxxxx.
Board Vendor: First International Computer, Inc..
Board Name: AZ11.
Board Version: PCB 1.X.
Asset Tag: Asset Tag Number xxxxxx.
apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x07 (Driver version 1.14)
Starting kswapd v1.8
block: queued sectors max/low 170029kB/56676kB, 512 slots per queue
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.31
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
hda: WDC WD172AA, ATA DISK drive
hdb: IOMEGA ZIP 100 ATAPI Floppy, ATAPI FLOPPY drive
hdc: CREATIVE CD-RW RW4424E, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: Creative CD-ROM CD4832E, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: 33687360 sectors (17248 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=2096/255/63
hdc: ATAPI 24X CD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 1860kB Cache
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
hdd: ATAPI 44X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache
hdb: 98304kB, 96/64/32 CHS, 4096 kBps, 512 sector size, 2941 rpm
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 >
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
Serial driver version 5.02 (2000-08-09) with MANY_PORTS SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI ena
bled
ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
PPP generic driver version 2.4.1
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
IP: routing cache hash table of 2048 buckets, 16Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 16384 bind 16384)
ip_tables: (c)2000 Netfilter core team
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 172k freed
Adding Swap: 136512k swap-space (priority -1)
PPP Deflate Compression module registered
NTFS version 000607
Warning! NTFS volume version is Win2k+: Mounting read-only

I'm not sure but I don't see the card as being detected there, also when I type ifconfig I only get ppp0 and lo interfaces. I know that the Ethernet 10/100 support is in the kernel tho, and windows sees the card so it must be working.

[jumpedintothefire]

Sorry, dmesg doesn't far enough in to the boot sequence, it stops just before the place where loadable modules are loaded.(/etc/conf.modules) that is why it is not part of the kernel messages. You're dual booting right? You may need to turn off the pnp on the card. What type of card should it be, this could be most helpful

[MrNewbie]

Ok I messed around and got the windows setup working fine and they connect everytime. Now for linux, the card is a Unex NexNIC 10/100Mbps Fast Ethernet PCI Adapter and it even says on the box its compatible with linux. Btw, I compiled the ethernet support into the kernel and not as a module, so it wouldnt be loaded at module time. Should I recompile to make it a module?

[jumpedintothefire]

Since your dual booting, have you turned off the pnp in the bios when you go into linux?