can't reach the Internet, but I have a link light, Mepis 6.0 RC2

hi,

I am a volunteer supporting a public middle school in San Francisco, CA with SimplyMepis 6.0 beta RC2. It's pretty solid, and I haven't had time to go to the final release of 6.0, and unfortunately, due to time constraints, doing so is not really an option now. We are having problems with just two identical Dell Optiplex GX110 boxes with 256 MB of RAM and chips at about 730 Mhz chips. We can't reach the Internet with those boxes. But we have been able to reach the Internet two identical boxes (also with Mepis 6.0) on the same subnet, as well as two other boxes on the same subnet, one which is a homebuilt box running Mepis 6.0 and the other is a Compaq with SuSE Linux 10.0. We have linklights on all the boxes, but we are not able to ping yahoo from the Konsole, nor are we able to reach the Internet with Mozilla. I have traced the ethernet cables back to the SMC EZ 1024 DT hub which is giving those boxes Internet signals, and the lights on that SMC are performing the same as all the other lights on that box which are receiving signals. I was pinging yahoo.com as root on all of these boxes.

Coincidentally, I am having the same problem with an identical Dell Optiplex GX 110 running Linspire Linux 5.0 on the same subnet. More about the Linspire box later.

Also, just FYI, this post is being written from one of the working Dell Optiplex GX 110 boxes. So I am obviously getting an Internet signal here.

I did an ifconfig on the Mepis 6.0 boxes, and sure enough, the second line under eth0 did not give me an inet address. (The box that I am using to write this message obviously is getting an inet address).

I tried to resolve the problems on the Mepis 6.0 boxes by clicking on the Kgear > Settings > Mepis system settings > Mepis Old OS Center > System Configuration > Network Interefaces, which brings up a dialog box with multiple tabs: Status; DNS; WiFi; eth0; eth1; eth2; etc. The default tab is Status. On the Status tab is a subsection labeled "network Status". Beneath the word status, are several fields: eth0, etc. On the working boxes, I get a IP address to the right of eth0, as it should be. On the non-working boxes, I get a message saying "not connected." To the right of the words "not connected" is a button to start and stop eth0. I tried that. No luck.

I tried ifdown eth0 and I got a message sayingInternet Sytems Consorium DHCP client V3.0.3, followed by DHCPRELEASE on eth0 to 192.xxx.xxx.xxx [in other words, an IP address that looked like it should be a good IP address]. The ifdown message also did say thtthe network is unreachable, and that I should consult a README file regarding the broadcast addreess, but I have no idea where that README file might be.

Nonetheless, undaunted, I tried ifup eth0, and got a message that it was listening on LPF/eth0/blah blah blah, followed by sending on blah blah followed by "DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5" ... "No DHCPOFFERS received."

I googled that error message, and didn't find anything useful.

WRT the Linspire 5.0 box, I went to the Launch (start) button > Control Center > Network Settings & Profiles > and hit the Refresh Interface button. Unfortunately, that didn't bring up a Network connection. I tried ifdown and ifup, and no luck there, either.

Question: I have found that uninstalling and reinstalling the NIC works with SuSE Linux, but I don't know how to do that under Mepis or Linspire. Any tips are appreciated.