simple question re: network card status

[SaltyDuke]

Hello

I'm trying to put my SuSE Linux machine onto my LAN, but can't seem to ping anyone besides myself!!! I've been setting up the N/W card (known to my machine as eth0) using YaST2 and the if config shell command, but so far i don't even know if the card is set up properly!!!

so my question is this: is there a shell command to tell me the status of my network card (i.e. working OK / not working)? at least this way i'll be able to start eliminating possible problems.

thanx in advance for any help
TheSaltyDuke

 

[RhythmAce]

typing 'ifconfig" should give you 2 blocks of information. The first block should be the eth0 device and the second, the lo or loopback device. At about the third line down, you should see a line in all caps. It will start with "UP BROADCAST RUNNING... ". If you don't see this, then eth0 is not coming up.

 

[SaltyDuke]

thanx for your help RhythmAce!

when i ran ifconfig, i told me exactly that (UP BROADCAST RUNNING), so i guess my problem lies elsewhere... that's ok though because i reckon it'll be easy enough to deal with

again, thanx

TheSaltyDuke

 

[kreepykrawler]

eth0 can stil be up with no IP address bound to it.

Try:
ifconfig eth0 ip.address.you.choose

and now try to ping other machines on your network. Better yet, if you have DHCPD running somewhere, just run

dhclient eth0

or

pump

 

[SaltyDuke]

thanks for your suggestion kreepykrawler!

i do have DHCP on my network, but when i enable it on my PC, it tells me it cannot find the DHCP server!

i was a little suspicious that my network card was faulty so i installed Windows 98 on the machine, only to find out the n/w card worked fine!! :-(

this leaves me with a very strange puzzle

thanx again,
TheSaltyDuke

 

[kreepykrawler]

Copy your command "dmesg" and paste it here.

I'm guessing it's a driver issue if the ifconfig command didnt work. Still there's screwy funkiness with SuSE. I was never able to correctly do network stuff.