There's a nifty little tool called neat (aka system-config-network) you can use to set up your network settings. I don't use gnome or kde anymore, so I can't tell you exactly where it would be on your menu, but you can open up a terminal and type "neat" or "system-config-network" to open it. It opens up in the "Devices" tab. You should see your network card listed. Double click it to bring up a dialog to set your IP info (DHCP if that's what you're using, or if you have a static IP address you'll enter it manually here). There are 3 tabs in this dialog, but you only need to worry abuot the first one (general). Click ok once you're done, then go to the DNS tab on the main window and enter the DNS servers for your ISP (ipconfig /all in win xp will give you this info if you don't have it). After that, File->Save then quit the program. It will say you may need to reboot etc etc, but all you really need to do (from the terminal again) is run the command:
/etc/init.d/network restart
After that you should be good to go. In case you are interested in what's going on behind the scenes, I'll tell you what neat is doing. As you may know just about everything in linux can be configured in a text file somewhere. Most of the network configuration information lives in:
/etc/sysconfig/network (file containing hostname to use, and toggle networking on/off)
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ (directory containing per-device information for each NIC)
Every network card in your system will have a file in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ called "ifcfg-<devicename>". So in the case of a single network card (called eth0), the settings are stored and can be changed in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0. Here's an example of what it looks like:
# Intel Corp.|82540EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=none
HWADDR=00:0D:9D:FF:23:5D
IPADDR=172.16.25.53
NETMASK=255.255.0.0
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
USERCTL=no
PEERDNS=no
GATEWAY=172.16.255.1
IPV6INIT=no
You may notice that DNS information isn't stored here. That's because it's a system-wide type of thing, not specific to any one network card. Host resolution and DNS info is stored in a file called /etc/resolv.conf. You can get more information about that by typing "man resolv.conf" at the command line, but the basics are you can use the nameserver directive to list your DNS servers like so:
search cms-stl.com dhcp.cms-stl.com # tells it to try and tack on cms-stl.com etc to hostnames if it can't find them
nameserver 172.16.1.1 # dns server #1
nameserver 172.16.1.4 # dns server #2
Modifying this file will take effect immediately, nothing needs to be restarted.
I hope some of this info can help you get online. Welcome to Linux, I hope you enjoy your adventure!
-Travis
Timothy Arnold wrote:
Hello, I recently installed Fedora Core 3 on my computer and am not sure how to configure the system so that it can access the Internet. It recognizes the ethernet device to which I am plugged in to. I am at a college campus and plugged directly into an ethernet port in the wall. I copied down information I thought I might need from XP's ipconfig before going on to install Fedora (things like what my DNS suffix, IP, subnet mask, and default gateway were at that time). I am new to Linux and Fedora and would appreciate any help anyone can offer. Thanks!
Timothy Arnold timarnold@xxxxxxxxxxx
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