Re: network configuration

Hey,
    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
>[email protected]
>
>  
>


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