# Gentoo boots, network dies.

## drowninglessons

I apologize in advance if this is the wrong area to be posting. I've searched every inch of google and i'm still stumped. I have a cable modem connected to a router, which connects to my PC as well as the rest of my home network of laptops through the wireless router. The computer can be shut off, ethernet unplugged - my PC can be entirely without any access to my router, and the network will remain in tact. (obviously, of course) My problem? Shortly after booting into the LiveCD or an install of Gentoo (this occurs in other distro's as well; i've attempted K/Ubuntu), my router loses its connection to the internet. Now, this isn't just my PC; the router's solid light indicates it is successfully connected to the internet through my cable modem - while booted into this Linux environment, however, the light begins to blink and my entire home network loses connection. Now, i'm pretty much new to Linux. I know the basics, and I know what i'm getting myself into by starting with Gentoo. What I don't understand, is why this is happening, when my PC should not have any effect on how the router operates - especially when the ethernet isn't even plugged in. 

I'm using an Asus P5N32-SLI Premium/WiFi-AP Mobo. The link provided should display any questions you may have that I can't answer regarding my network connections. Two nforce ports, a 1394, and wireless LAN. I tried disabling all but one, where I have my ethernet plugged in, but the router problems remain.

I have no clue what's wrong, and i'm just dying to get back into a working Gentoo. Any help would be appreciated.

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## chainsawbike

very odd...

anyway try turning off wifi on mobo and router (and removing aireals + do other stuff to stop signal passing)

also maybe try an offline install?

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## richard.scott

I've had a similar experience with an ADSL link in the UK. 

It ended up being something due to noise on the ADSL link as it was faulty.

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## drowninglessons

Thanks for the replies. I believe I tried disabling excess network connections in my bios before I went to boot Gentoo, but i'll double check, as well as see if the wireless is removable, making things a bit easier.

 *richard.scott wrote:*   

> I've had a similar experience with an ADSL link in the UK. 
> 
> It ended up being something due to noise on the ADSL link as it was faulty.

 

So it may actually be a router problem? Is there any real way to tell aside from replacing it?

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## richard.scott

 *drowninglessons wrote:*   

> So it may actually be a router problem? Is there any real way to tell aside from replacing it?

 

Nope, it actually ended up being a problem with the telephone cabling to the house.

When my router was requesting too much bandwidth it would start using frequency's that were in the same range as the "hiss" noise on the line. This was corrupting the data the router was getting and making the router drop and try to re-initialise the connection. However, if I was on the phone at the same time it all worked just fine!

It ended up that the external phone line back to the exchange had been cut at one point and fixed. This fix was letting in water that was causing the wires to short out a little as it was a very old cable

I've added more taped to the join and unless it rains really hard its all ok for me now.

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## drowninglessons

Well, i'm back. Sorry for the late response, but i've just been so busy with work lately. I haven't had the patience to deal with Gentoo (I recently had my fair share of installation headaches, read: vista) until now. I managed to get my HDs back up and running (three WD 250gb - vista, fat32backup, gentoo), so i'll be playing with Gentoo this weekend. 

I have a pretty silly question. My router is a Belkin F5D7230-4; I figured i'd take a whack at updating its firmware. Looking at the specs on Belkin's site, it includes Windows and Mac compatibility, but leaves the "Also supports computers running Linux or Unix OS" stated in the other router models. Do you suppose the router fails because a lack of Linux compatibility? Or am I looking too deep into this? (With my lack of networking knowledge, you'd never guess I was a CS major  :Mad: )

I guess that's just about it. This is so extremely frustrating. I wish I didn't have an internet connection due to a funky file config like normal people. Why must this be so complicated? 

Thanks!

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## richard.scott

My personal view is that if it will work for a Mac it will work for Linux.

I still think this is due to signal quality rather than equipment....

Have you asked your ISP to run their tests on your cable connection?

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## drowninglessons

Actually, I haven't thought about asking them. I'd assume they're closed at this point, (8:30p EST), so i'll try contacting them Monday. Though, you know how these companies can be - it may take me days until I can manage to get a response aside from 'okay sir, is your router plugged in?' 

In any case, I suppose my only options at this point are to try out another router (I might as well try connecting the PC directly to my cable modem) until I can get in touch with my ISP. I'm going to try booting Gentoo tonight, should be fun >.>

Thanks for the response, i'll report back with my status.

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## drowninglessons

*News* So, turns out my timing must have been off when troubleshooting the network. With the ethernet unplugged, the router does /not/ lose its connection. The fact that both my router and my card work perfectly fine under Windows, and that my router has functioned under a linux machine I used a few years ago - pretty much rules out any hardware defects, no?

Again, i'm not very familiar with troubleshooting in Linux - are there any error messages, or just coding anyone can sift through? I mean, it's obviously failing due to something software related?

oh, and richard - my ISP will be looking into any problems, thanks.

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## SeaTiger

How is your gentoo network configured? DHCP or static ip? Is any network package/server installed?

Is your router running NAT and what is the internal ip of it? Any chance of conflicting with the gentoo ip?

Also try turn of upnp in the router(this one is a guess).

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## richard.scott

 *junksiu wrote:*   

> How is your gentoo network configured? DHCP or static ip? Is any network package/server installed?
> 
> Is your router running NAT and what is the internal ip of it? Any chance of conflicting with the gentoo ip?
> 
> Also try turn of upnp in the router(this one is a guess).

 

I'm not sure if that'll make any difference, its the router that's dropping the connection and not the gentoo box that can't see the router.

if I'm correct in this thinking, when the Internet goes down you should still be able to ping the router i.e.

```
# ping 192.168.0.1
```

If that works then i'd say its something wrong with the ISP side of the router.

In my experience with Gentoo its got great support out-the-box for network interfaces

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## drowninglessons

 *junksiu wrote:*   

> How is your gentoo network configured? DHCP or static ip? Is any network package/server installed?
> 
> Is your router running NAT and what is the internal ip of it? Any chance of conflicting with the gentoo ip?
> 
> Also try turn of upnp in the router(this one is a guess).

 

My router is configured for DHCP. I'm not sure what you mean by any network package or servers installed, so i'd assume no, heh. The router is configured for NAT as well, and the internal IP is 192.168.2.1. I have no clue if it's conflicting with the Gentoo IP - the only thing i'm worse at than Gentoo, is networking. If it was ANY other problem, i'd welcome it with open arms -_- As for UPNP, I just booted into Gentoo with it disabled - no difference.

 *richard.scott wrote:*   

> 
> 
> if I'm correct in this thinking, when the Internet goes down you should still be able to ping the router i.e.
> 
> ```
> ...

 

Tried pinging 192.168.2.1, and it responded with the network being unreachable. 

/cry

I can post any messages you'd like me to. I have a storage drive with a fat32 partition - I can just mount it and write a log output there.

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## richard.scott

If you can then ping your router after rebooting it I'd say its not your Gentoo box at fault   :Wink: 

At what time does the network go down, are you doing anything like downloading a new package or something large? 

When your network is working, can you ping www.google.com?

If so, then the Gentoo box is configured correctly.

Do the status lights change on your router when it all dies?

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## drowninglessons

Unfortunately, even when the router's light is solid, I have no working internet through Gentoo. The results of pinging my router whether the light is solid or blinking are the same (edit: this includes any outside servers, ie google); this seems to complicate the problem a bit more, considering I now have to both troubleshoot why the router is going down, and why I have no connection while it's up.

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## richard.scott

 *drowninglessons wrote:*   

> Unfortunately, even when the router's light is solid, I have no working internet through Gentoo. The results of pinging my router whether the light is solid or blinking are the same (edit: this includes any outside servers, ie google); this seems to complicate the problem a bit more, considering I now have to both troubleshoot why the router is going down, and why I have no connection while it's up.

 

Do you have another hard wired pc that is also connected to your router via a different network cable and socket on the router?

If that works, what about swapping the gentoo cable over with this other working one to see if the working pc still works (hope your still with me there).

Or, (just thought of this)... It could just be that when your router dies Gentoo isn't able to renew the lease on the DHCP IP so unconfigures its interface. This would also give you the routing errors your finding.

What do you see for this output when it dies:

```
# ifconfig eth0

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:E0:4C:FD:18:A8

          inet addr:192.168.1.2  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0

          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

          RX packets:434 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:530 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

          RX bytes:84879 (82.8 Kb)  TX bytes:50432 (49.2 Kb)

          Interrupt:23 Base address:0xa000
```

It should tell you an "inet addr" and not be empty. For example the following is an unconfigured interface:

```
# ifconfig eth1

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:11:43:CE:1F:93

          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

          Base address:0xdcc0 Memory:fdee0000-fdf00000
```

And as you can see, there is no IP address listed.

What are you doing when the connection dies??

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## drowninglessons

 *richard.scott wrote:*   

> Do you have another hard wired pc that is also connected to your router via a different network cable and socket on the router?
> 
> If that works, what about swapping the gentoo cable over with this other working one to see if the working pc still works (hope your still with me there).

 

I *think* I know what you're getting at. If i'm right, I wasn't exactly clear on my explanation (bear with me here if you did understand - i'm just trying to make sure this problem is solved without wasting anyone's time) - by the router's light losing its solid connection, I mean the master light. By that, I mean, every wired port that connects to a PC via ethernet has a light of its own - an orange light that is solid if it has a connection, and is not lit if there is nothing connected. Because I only have my PC connected via ethernet, there is only one orange light - the rest of my network is wireless. The light that starts to blink is the main router light - if this light indicates it is not receiving a connection, none of my network will be able to connect to the internet. If I understand your question correctly, you seem to think i'm referring to the individual ethernet port light, so by switching the cables, i'd eliminate the possibility of a faulty port. (I may be completely off base here, just making sure) If that wasn't what you were getting at, I do have another PC in the house I can connect if necessary. It's not in working order right now, but I can easily pop an OS and have its drivers up and running if need be.

I ran ifconfig three times: once after I booted into the LiveCD, once after I ran net-setup (I don't know if this helps you in any way, shape, or form, but just in case), and once the router lost its connection:

ifconfig after boot:

```
livecd ~ # ifconfig eth0

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:18:F3:B7:0D:2D  

          inet addr:169.254.176.50  Bcast:169.254.255.255  Mask:255.255.0.0

          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 

          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:3461 (3.3 Kb)

          Interrupt:218 Base address:0x4000 
```

ifconfig after net-setup:

```
livecd ~ # ifconfig eth0

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:18:F3:B7:0D:2D  

          inet addr:169.254.176.50  Bcast:169.254.255.255  Mask:255.255.0.0

          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 

          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:5883 (5.7 Kb)

          Interrupt:218 Base address:0x4000
```

ifconfig after router loses connection:

```
livecd ~ # ifconfig eth0

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:18:F3:B7:0D:2D  

          inet addr:169.254.176.50  Bcast:169.254.255.255  Mask:255.255.0.0

          inet6 addr: fe80::218:f3ff:feb7:d2d/64 Scope:Link

          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 

          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:27619 (26.9 Kb)

          Interrupt:218 Base address:0x4000
```

As for what i'm doing at the time it goes down, the answer is pretty much - nothing. I ran a test to make sure it went down on its own. Booted into it, and didn't touch it. After about 4.5-5 minutes, it went down. That's pretty much the amount of time it takes normally.

(Edit): This was done via the LiveCD, obviously. I switched my drives around, so I recently wiped my Gentoo drive. This shouldn't be an issue, though, considering the network issues are the same in both the LiveCD environment and once Gentoo is installed (If you need results from a working Gentoo install, I can do that as well).

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## drowninglessons

I'll give this its first and last bump. If there's really no one who can figure this out or nothing I can do, i'll give up on this thread. I guess there's always the option of throwing my PC out the window and buying a new one, right? Tempting T.T

(Edit): News! Okay, so I had like, a massive light bulb hit me while I was in bed trying to fall asleep. What if, by a chance in a million, the security features I had enabled in the router were causing it to lose connection once Gentoo tried gaining access without a password. In the end, I couldn't be more wrong - but! Turns out, a laptop connected wirelessly lost connection BEFORE booting into the Gentoo DE - that is, a few seconds after selecting the Kernel, the connection was lost (though the light wasn't yet flashing, i'd assume it takes a bit of time for it to realize it doesn't have a working connection). It makes sense.. a process that boots from the liveCD is killing my internet. (well, we pretty much figured that out from the beginning, but the fact that the internet goes down before the light flashes is a nice lead) I have an error or two that seemed insignificant at bootup, though one error was reported right after detecting my eth0 and eth1. I'll post the errors once I boot it up tomorrow.

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## richard.scott

IMHO your problems all seem to be within the the router rather than Linux.

I've been using Gentoo since 2002/3 and never had an issue with hardware aslong as I've been using the latest LiveCD.

Have you (I hate to say this as its not Gentoo) tried anything like Knoppix?? That'd boot and run from a CD drive.

You could then rule out any problem with Gentoo as I'm pretty sure you'll have the same issue with Knoppix too!

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## drowninglessons

My aim in asking for help from here was to see if anyone could suggest a process that may cause these symptoms. Considering no one seems to have any idea why this is happening - because it doesn't make sense - and the fact that it does, in fact, happen on Ubuntu as well, leaves me at square one. I'm going to go and buy a new router tonight. If it doesn't work, I can always return it. I'm not so into dropping ~$70 (if i'm buying new, i'm buying an N) right now, but hey, a router lasts for years.

I'll post back here if anything changes once I get a hold of a new router, or end up figuring out the problem.

For now, thanks for all your help, richard - and anyone else who suggested anything. Much appreciated <3

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