Hi all,

I've just installed redhat linux 7.3 and everything is good so far except my network connection. When I use the wizard to activate it gives me an error 'cannot activate' but no reason. Using the wizard I can see the device Eth0 and under the hardware tab it seems to recognize the card 'Intel EtherExpress 100B'. Anyone help me out here?
Mace

screw the wizard .

first off, how are you connected to the internet? is your network card plugged right into the cable or dsl modem? or are you using a router. if you are using a router do you have a dhcp server running? do you want to use a static or dynamic ip?

if it detects your card already and the driver for it is loaded than getting you on the net shouldnt be a problem...(hopefully).

take a look here also.

Thanks for your quick response! I've been to the link and I'll read through when I have a bit more time. To reply to your first questions I'm not using the card to access the internet but to set up a home network. I have a seperate modem which I actually got working! ( you may have guessed by now that I'm new to this!). I've made a direct connection to my PC which is running win2k. When the wizard was trying to activate I saw on my PC that a connection was established but then the error comes up and the connection is lost. Also on boot the system tries to activate the eth0 but fails. Seem strange to me as it recognizes the hardware. Hope this is enough info for you to figure it out!

Mace

I also had the same problem when I tried to activate a network interface in RH 7.3. Recognized but failed to activate. Finally got it to work by upgrading to a newer version of RH. I think your case is similar (or you may upgrade the kernel manually, if you like).

Possibly you should try Fedora instead.

Sorry this took so long but now I've upgraded the kenel but didn't help. I put in a fixed IP address and this works. At least I can activate the card but when I tried an FTP transfer I couldn't connect. Are there somewhere protocols to set-up or do I have to de-activate some security setting?

Thanks in advance.

Mace

ok so your connected to a router? with the static ip you assigned via ifconfig, can you ping your router? you would do this by typing:
ping router's ip address

where of course router's ip address would be something like 192.168.1.1

if you have a dhcp server running on your network, getting you machine to use a dynamic ip address should be as simple as creating a file called dhclient.conf in the /etc/ directory. do that with the command:
touch /etc/dhclient.conf

leave it empty, your computer should then automatically get an ip address from the dhcp server.

i still dont know what your network set up is however. you have a network card in your computer, what is that connected to? a router? a modem? another computer? we still need some more info in order to help you.