network set-up problem

Help! I have spent two days on this and made very little
progress -- clearly I am missing something.

I am trying to connect a Sparc Classic to my LAN.  The Classic
apparently has a bad on-board ethernet port which keeps switching
between TPE and AUI without recognizing that it is plugged into
the LAN.  Hence, I have installed a Sun 501-2981 Sbus ethernet
card to use instead.

The Classic is running headless with a VT220 emulator connected
to its serial port as console.  The link light LED on the hub
to which the Classic's CAT5 ethernet is connected is lighted.
The OS is SuSE Linux 7.3 (SPARC) - Kernel 2.2.20 (ttyS0).

Upon start-up, SuSE appears to recognize both the onboard ethernet
and the Sbus card correctly:

   sunlance.c:v1.12 11/Mar/99 Miguel de Icaza ([email protected])
   eth0: LANCE 08:00:20:1d:d5:7c
   eth0: using auto-carrier-detection.
   eth1: LANCE 08:00:20:1d:d5:7c

I have used ifconfig to set eth0 down and eth1 up, and to identify
eth1 as the Classic's assigned IP of 172.16.2.124:

   arcturus:/home/oldbear # ifconfig -a
   eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 08:00:20:1D:D5:7C
             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:100
             RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
             Interrupt:38 Base address:0xb200

   eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 08:00:20:1D:D5:7C
             inet addr:172.16.2.124  Bcast:172.16.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
             inet6 addr: fe80::800:201d:d57c/10 Scope:Link
             inet6 addr: fe80::a00:20ff:fe1d:d57c/10 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:18 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:18
             collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
             RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:1232 (1.2 Kb)
             Interrupt:55 Base address:0x8a00

   lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
             inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
             inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
             UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:3924  Metric:1
             RX packets:15 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
             TX packets:15 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
             collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
             RX bytes:1428 (1.3 Kb)  TX bytes:1428 (1.3 Kb)


The routing table obtained with the route command appears to be correct but
is very slow to display if not invoked with the -n flag (numeric IP only):

   arcturus:/home/oldbear # route -n
   Kernel IP routing table
   Destination  Gateway       Genmask        Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
   172.16.2.0   0.0.0.0       255.255.255.0  U     0      0     0 eth1
   127.0.0.0    0.0.0.0       255.0.0.0      U     0      0     0 lo
   0.0.0.0      172.16.2.100  0.0.0.0        UG    0      0     0 eth1


For reasons that I do not understand, if I include a line refering to the
172.16.2.0 LAN in etc/rout.conf, it will appear twice when displayed with
the route -n command.  Hence, I have only two lines in route.conf and
don't know where SuSE is finding out about the 172.16.2.0 network:

   arcturus:/etc # cat route.conf
   default         172.16.2.100    0.0.0.0         eth1
   127.0.0.0       0.0.0.0         255.0.0.0       lo

The LAN gateway is a NAT machine at 172.16.2.100 which also provides
primary nameservice.  It is identified in etc/resolv.conf

All this being said, this is what happens when I try to ping
anything other than localhost:

   arcturus:/etc # ping localhost
   PING localhost (127.0.0.1) from 127.0.0.1 : 56(84) bytes of data.
   Warning: no SO_TIMESTAMP support, falling back to SIOCGSTAMP
   64 bytes from localhost (127.0.0.1): icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=467 usec
   64 bytes from localhost (127.0.0.1): icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=455 usec
   64 bytes from localhost (127.0.0.1): icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=469 usec

   arcturus:/etc # ping 172.16.2.100
   PING 172.16.2.100 (172.16.2.100) from 172.16.2.124 : 56(84) bytes of data.
   Warning: no SO_TIMESTAMP support, falling back to SIOCGSTAMP
   From 172.16.2.124: icmp_seq=3 Destination Host Unreachable
   From 172.16.2.124: icmp_seq=2 Destination Host Unreachable
   From 172.16.2.124: icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable
   From 172.16.2.124: icmp_seq=6 Destination Host Unreachable
   From 172.16.2.124: icmp_seq=5 Destination Host Unreachable
   From 172.16.2.124: icmp_seq=4 Destination Host Unreachable

I don't know what the Warning message means and I am puzzled by
the sequence of 3 2 1 , 6 5 4, etc for the unreachable
responses when trying to ping my 172.16.2.100 machine.

The only other thing which appears wrong is an error message on
startup "wrong console number" but I doubt if this has anything
to do with my networking problems -- just something else to fix
in the start-up script.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.  Thanks.

Sincerely,
Will
The Old Bear