[vox-tech] Peters Kernal Update and a Few Questions

[Jeff Newmiller]

On Fri, 30 Nov 2001, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:

> begin: Roland Minden <rminden@Unilab.com> quote
[...]
> > I am having some trouble with my internet connection at home. I called for
> > support and waited on hold for about 25 minutes (no joke I timed it). When I
> > got hold of AT&T they asked what Operating system I had and as soon as I
> > said Linux they took this whole we can't help you with anything attitude.
> > They also said I should be using DHCP. So I tried to set it up to use DHCP
> > and it would not work. I get connected using the static IP, but I am not
> > able to get my usual connection speed. My connection speeds have been really
> > crappy for about 3 weeks. I have a static IP and have checked it out as far
> > as settings and it looks good. I thought it maybe be my cat5 cable so I
> > replaced it and it made little difference. At work I use Windows NT with HP
> > OpenView to trouble shoot our network connections. Is there anything like it
> > I can use with Linux?
> 
> troubleshoot exactly what?  what sorts of things do they give info on?  i'd
> eat my hat if you couldn't do the same thing on linux.

Be careful, Pete.  What you "can do" in Linux sometimes requires that
someone create the software to do so, which at best can take time.
This is particularly true in newer technologies like ATM cards.
Fortunately, DHCP _is_ supported, but it is a fairly complicated piece of
software that has had a history of signficant updates so troubleshooting
requires that you be familiar with "normal" networking under Linux as well
as that history.

> > I can ping successfully to yahoo.com. I can send and
> > receive email (though very slowly). I am starting to babble now. Let me know
> > what information to send or any advice on how to deal with AT&T. I thought
> > about telling them I have Winblows, but I would rather not have to do that.
>  
> i'm sure it can be done, but i know literally nothing about DHCP.   i don't
> even know what it stands for, although i can guess that D=dynamic and
> P=protocol.   :-)   i'm sure there are people here who use DHCP.   anyone
> help here?

The key for DHCP on Linux is dhclient, which broadcasts requests (possibly
with identifying information such as an assigned host name) and listens
for answers containing a wide variety of bits... ip address, mask, dns
server addresses, wins servers, whatever.  The newer versions of dhclient
handle more bits, putting them in the right files according to the
configuration of the client.

While I have used it briefly on other people's setups, I don't have
detailed experience with the mechanics of troubleshooting it because I was
assigned a static IP by DCN.  I guess you can read
http://www.isc.org/products/DHCP/ and find out more, but a grasp of the
fundamentals of network troubleshooting will be required if the
out-of-the-box scripts don't work for you.  Watch the error messages, look
in the usual network configuration files after dhclient gets an assignment
to see what the result was, use ping, ifconfig, route -n, and so forth to
see what it did to the kernel.

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