Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Thu, 12 May 2005, Constant Brouerius van Nidek wrote:

> Since three days one of my computers is connected with the Internet via an
> ADSL modem/ router.

I'm not familiar with such a thing as a "modem /router." In the US, ADSL 
requires a particular type of modem, which is a separate piece of hardware 
that filters internet packets from your telephone line and sends them over 
ethernet to a computer or other ethernet-capable device. Another 
ethernet-capable device that often figures in right after the ADSL modem 
is a router (or switch). Perhaps you were saying that you have this sort 
of setup, i.e., an ADSL modem that feeds into a router via an ethernet 
cable? So, your setup would be: [ADSL modem]----->[router]----->[Suse 
box]. Does that approximate your setup? I.e., the ADSL modem and router 
are two separate hardware pieces that connect together via ethernet? And, 
furthermore, you connect your computers to the router? If this is the 
scenario, you'll need to tell us more about your router.

> My BL2 box is connected to this router and should be able to start using this
> connection too if I only would know what to change/do.

Ok. Supposing your router has a dhcp server, you'll need to get BL2 to 
issue a dhcp request. Most modern routers do incorporate a dhcp server, I 
think. But even in those cases, a user can often specify that it should 
use static addressing instead of, or in addition to, dhcp. So, until you 
tell us whether your network and devices use static adressing or whether a 
dhcp server is involved, I don't think we can answer how to get BL2 on 
your network. Perhaps telling us how your Suse box managed to get online 
will help?

> On my Suse box it was very easy. On the BL2 box I assume it is more work but
> it should still be manageable.
> Could somebody show me the way?

Please describe more about how the Suse box got online. What, more 
precisely, does "it was very easy" mean? As a guess, I would say "it was 
very easy" could mean you just plugged an ethernet cable from the NIC on 
your Suse box to an ethernet port on the router, started up the Suse box, 
and it automagically got online. If this is the way it went, I would guess 
the following: your router runs a dhcp server and Suse, being a modern 
distro, auto-detected your NIC and sent out a dhcp request on it when you 
started the machine. Modern distros are usually set to issue dhcp requests 
on whatever NIC they find. BL2, on the other hand, requires some manual 
intervention (installing a dhcp client) and editing of a config file (so 
dhcp runs on the NIC at startup) to do this.

So, based on what I've said, do you think your router might be running a 
dhcp server? Or have you perhaps done some manual, static address 
assigning? Or are my assumptions about your setup wrong? The answers to 
your query will be different based on your answers to these sorts of 
questions.

James