Trying to reflash a scrambled BIOS is quite a pain...

And SCARY too. LOL I think I agree that to have any hope of running 64 linux, I have few options, but to try it. Will try after work.

The scary part is not the loss of the machine, but the loss of data. This computer houses my main network drive.

<singing>I'm off to do the backup,........ the wonderful backup of OS</singing>

Trying to reflash a scrambled BIOS is quite a pain...

And SCARY too. LOL I think I agree that to have any hope of running 64 linux, I have few options, but to try it. Will try after work.

The scary part is not the loss of the machine, but the loss of data. This computer houses my main network drive.

<singing>I'm off to do the backup,........ the wonderful backup of OS</singing>

Use a spare hard drive to try the install, so you don't hose your data.

Use a spare hard drive to try the install, so you don't hose your data.

Great idea. One little problem though. I have a problem. It seems that everytime I have a "spare" anything, the other parts needed to build a computer around that part magically appear via a big brown truck. I rationalize it this way; "Gee honey, I already have X, so it won't cost that much".

Example:
This is how my unhoused computer came into being. It has a microatx psu, 2.5" laptop Hard drive, Full ATX mobo, P4 1.8 cpu, 512M PC 2100 ram.

Use a spare hard drive to try the install, so you don't hose your data.

Great idea. One little problem though. I have a problem. It seems that everytime I have a "spare" anything, the other parts needed to build a computer around that part magically appear via a big brown truck. I rationalize it this way; "Gee honey, I already have X, so it won't cost that much".

Example:
This is how my unhoused computer came into being. It has a microatx psu, 2.5" laptop Hard drive, Full ATX mobo, P4 1.8 cpu, 512M PC 2100 ram.

Sounds perfectly rational to me.......LOL

Update: I've updated the bios, and updated many of the windows drivers (audio, video, etc). I didn't see any change to the "already installed" suse 10.1. I attempted to install the Mandriva x86-64 DVD that previously wouldn't boot to the install screen on two previous occasions and this time, it worked.

I have Mandriva 2007 Free x86-64 installed. Boinc 5.4.11 with Augustines 5.8.11 boinc installed and running. I'll let it burn through some work units before I attempt the reboot. Rebooting causes Suse to lose track of the Network Device, so I'll be curious to see.

Update: I've updated the bios, and ... I attempted to install the Mandriva x86-64 DVD that previously wouldn't boot to the install screen on two previous occasions and this time, it worked.

... I'll let it burn through some work units before I attempt the reboot. Rebooting causes Suse to lose track of the Network Device, so I'll be curious to see.

Interesting and a very good test.

Good luck,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

yeah, it worked after rebooting. Guess I'm all Mandriva now. Not just that, I'm too afraid to try anything else for a while. LOL I'll let em run.

sorry, I didn't respond sooner. I had a doctors followup in North Carolina which required an overnight stay. Good news, Cancer hasn't returned. Bad news, the High dollar Nissan Fundoplication surgery seems to have stopped working as the acid reflux is back. Meeting with the stomach doc later this month to see if another surgery (9th or 10th in less than 3 years) is in order.

yeah, it worked after rebooting. Guess I'm all Mandriva now. Not just that, I'm too afraid to try anything else for a while. LOL I'll let em run.

sorry, I didn't respond sooner. I had a doctors followup in North Carolina which required an overnight stay. Good news, Cancer hasn't returned. Bad news, the High dollar Nissan Fundoplication surgery seems to have stopped working as the acid reflux is back. Meeting with the stomach doc later this month to see if another surgery (9th or 10th in less than 3 years) is in order.

Well; since you mention that you've already had 9-10 surgeries in less than three years, you may have already tried these Prescriptions - however, I'll mention them anyway:

Prevacid (30mg at night)

or

Nexium (don't know the presc. str. - I've never been on Nexium)


I'm on Prevacid, and thankfully have not had surgery for Acid Reflux. I have had 5 Sinus Surgeries; though.

---

TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join Calm Chaos

yeah, it worked after rebooting. Guess I'm all Mandriva now. Not just that, I'm too afraid to try anything else for a while. LOL I'll let em run.

sorry, I didn't respond sooner. I had a doctors followup in North Carolina which required an overnight stay. Good news, Cancer hasn't returned. Bad news, the High dollar Nissan Fundoplication surgery seems to have stopped working as the acid reflux is back. Meeting with the stomach doc later this month to see if another surgery (9th or 10th in less than 3 years) is in order.

Sorry to "hear" about the surgeries. Hope that can all work out somehow, and soon.

I did at least skim every message in the thread. Not only was it a lot more informative than you seem to think, it gave me what I think is a pretty cool idea to work on.

I'm pretty much a total "noob" as far as linux goes. I had some experience with Unix years ago, but have mostly forgotten that. I've learned about things like ssh (well, at least enough to almost be dangerous) sort of by osmosis

I'm no stranger to command lines, as I was one of those people that started out on CP/M, then held out on x86 DOS as long as I could. I have some dumb linux questions for later.

In the meanwhile, I am reasonably strong in networking, with the CompTIA Network+ certification as proof. I think I can offer some insight here, even as ignorant as I am about linux. Please bear with me, because I don't know which of quite a number of possibly helpful, gory details are going to be what you need.

A previous post mentioned AIPIPA (sorry, I didn't catch whom). Funny that I didn't remember this as being originally strictly a Windoze phenomenon, but there it was when I did a vroosh search. How crazy that they are implementing this in linux!

Anyway, (s)he was totally right about the IP 169.254.X.X address you were showing as being characteristic of that. You were smart to be cagey about the exact address, though this is one of what are called "private IP ranges" That is, there are certain ranges of IP addresses that can't be reached over the Internet, because the routers that comprise the Internet won't route them. This is one of them.

As far as that goes, the 192.168.x.x (or at least part of that range) is another private IP range.

Interestingly enough, a my broken-connector cable came unplugged from one of my (Windoze) boxes (unbenknownst to me) and I rebooted it. When it still wouldn't access my network, I did an /ipconfig (in a command window), and saw an AIPIPA address, so I was able to quickly determine what the problem was. BTW, IMNSHO, "stealing" your network information from one of your Windoze boxes was an excellent suggestion, Richard.

Something just occurred to me. It wouldn't be a bad idea for you to run this on all of your Windoze boxes, and make note of the settings. If you don't want to write all that nonsense down, just make sure that the first three numbers (called "octets" for reasons far too complex to go into here) are identical - e.g. 192.168.2.X, and that your subnet mask is also consistent 255.255.255.0 check your gateway address and DNS suffix, too If your Windoze boxes work on the same network there is basically no way these things can be inconsistent (possible, just highly improbable). The kicker is, while you're at it get the last number from each IP address and write it down. Make sure you also have the IP address of the DHCP server and the IP address(es) of your DNS server(s) for your Windoze boxes.

Anyway, what I saw happening throughout the thread, over and over, was you could get your linux box to talk to the rest of your network, only when you manually set the IP address, one way or another.

It looks like the linux box DHCP flat isn't working for some reason, and when you reboot, it blows away your manually-set IP address, tries DHCP anyway, and on some distros, it settles on an AIPIPA address. This is sort of troubling, because DHCP is an open standard, and it should be interoperable, especially since your router is probably acting as the DHCP server. The only thing I can think of is that whatever daemon (? - I'm showing my ignorance, here) process, whatever is trying to run the DHCP somehow isn't persisting the right IP address for your DHCP server (this is also the gateway address, because your router is also your DHCP server. Naturally, this isn't always the case).

This is not to say that DHCP is a simple process, because it's nothing like that. That's why you are getting advice to just bypass it if it won't work.

I concur with your previous advice. Manually set the IP address on the linux box inside the same net but outside the DHCP range. I think it was ML1 that suggested 192.168.2.202 (just double check that this isn't within your DHCP range, and the first three octets are the same as your router), with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. To that, I would add, if you want this to work after a reboot, you have to get rid of (comment out, whatever), whatever is automatically executing that is blowing away your IP address.

Then, as a quick troubleshoot:
-run the linux version of ipconfig to double check your IP address, subnet mask, and gateway address (IP address for your router)
-ping 127.0.0.1 (proves NIC and tcp/ip stack is working)
-ping the linux box from one of your Windoze boxes. If you can't, something is seriously wrong. All I can say if this happens is to double-check everything, and try temporarily switching the cable to the linux box with one from a Windoze box that has never failed on you. If the linux box still doesn't work and the Windoze box still does (you probably would have to do ipconfig /release then ipconfig /renew on the windoze box), then your IP or NIC configuration on the linux box is bad
-ping your router (192.169.2.1, I think - if you can't ping your router, you are screwed. Since it works sometimes, it's probably not the cable, more likely we don't have the tcp/ip configured right)
-If you can get the public address of your modem (I've seen some sites that will tell you that - try shields up on GRC.com from one of your Windoze boxes), ping that from the linux box, too.
-run linux version of tracert (trace route - somebody that actually knows something about linux will know what this is) to www.yahoo.com (or whatever). You should see it hit your router, your DNS server, then some number of hops before it either times out or hits Yahoo. The important thing here is making sure it hits your DNS server.

Loopback plugs are very cheap from places like cyberguys.com If you had one, you could also ping the linux box from the linux box (using the real IP address, not 127.0.0.1, which is a software loopback address), and make absolutely sure that your NIC is set up right, and functioning.

Do a reboot, and try again. If you fail on the first step, you just have to figure out what is hosing up you IP address, disable it, reset your IP address, and try again.

One quick (and crazy) thought - are you absolutely certain that that's an 8 port switch, and not a router? Even so, make really sure that you only have one DHCP server on your entire network. Yes, there are ways to have more than one (and make them failover and/or load balance), and that's simply not sane on a home network. That could mean your modem too (they sometimes have routers built in).

I'll ask the dumb linux questions later.

Well; since you mention that you've already had 9-10 surgeries in less than three years, you may have already tried these Prescriptions - however, I'll mention them anyway:

Prevacid (30mg at night)

or

Nexium (don't know the presc. str. - I've never been on Nexium)


I'm on Prevacid, and thankfully have not had surgery for Acid Reflux. I have had 5 Sinus Surgeries; though.

All but one of the surgeries were for the cancer. One was to perform a Laporoscopic Nissan Fundoplication (where they wrap your stomach around your Esophogus and staple/stich it back to upon itself. This forms a sort of donut around your esophagus, so when pressure builds, it squeezes your esophagus shut, thus preventing the acid from washing your esophagus, larynx, and lungs. It was this "acid washing" which caused my cancer of the larynx.

I was first put on Nexium and Ranitinidine (sp?) and after a month or two, no improvement was seen. Evidently some valve wasn't closing fully, hence the need for the nissan, and why Nexium didn't do much. My new prescription is for Prevacid 30mg bid, but was filled with Protonix 40 mg. I'll be seeing the surgeon about the possibly faulty Nissan in a couple weeks.

@Lloyd M, The machine in question was dual boot. In windows the NIC and everything has worked fine since it was put online back in Jan. With 3 installs/reinstalls of Suse, each time it worked fine until it was rebooted. After reboot, 127.0.0.1 was the only addy that I could successfully ping. Everything thing else was "network not available". Firewall was disabled upon install. I updated the Mobo bios from 0405 to 0705, and the already installed suse still didn't work. I installed Mandriva and now it works. I don't know if it still would if I reinstalled suse or not. I might have changed something within Suse which prevented the bios update from allowing Suse to work. Setting the IP/DNS manually provided the same problem and didn't help.

[...Lot's of good comments and fun...]

Astro: Hope your stomach can be sorted out ok.

...I updated the Mobo bios from 0405 to 0705, and the already installed suse still didn't work. I installed Mandriva and now it works. I don't know if it still would if I reinstalled suse or not. I might have changed something within Suse which prevented the bios update from allowing Suse to work. Setting the IP/DNS manually provided the same problem and didn't help.

Good that the BIOS update fixed a few things.

The manually set IP/DNS(/gateway?) giving the same non-connectivity is a real puzzle.

On Linux, a rough equivalent of "ipconfig" is called "ifconfig" just for Windows to be "differentiated" enough to cause confusion. (Windows used to use the very same TCP/IP program code as used in various *nix systems including Linux...)

Is there a reference anywhere to AIPIPA?


Happy crunchin',
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

The manually set IP/DNS(/gateway?) giving the same non-connectivity is a real puzzle.

On Linux, a rough equivalent of "ipconfig" is called "ifconfig" just for Windows to be "differentiated" enough to cause confusion. (Windows used to use the very same TCP/IP program code as used in various *nix systems including Linux...)

Is there a reference anywhere to AIPIPA?

Yup, that's the puzzle. It saw the SAME nic as Mandriva does, but both had a different name from windows, but the hardware addy for all were identical. It's my impression/opinion that it just lost the ability to use the NIC(built into Mobo) after the restart. I couldn't ping the WAP/router, or the Modem. The message wasn't "destination unreachable", but "network unavailable".

To be honest, I don't think I've ever heard of "AIPIPA", before this thread, and don't recall ever seeing it in the configuration menus. I did look at every option possible too. I played by changing every dang option available, so I don't think that acronym exists.