Everything but Net! (very long, but I think not offensive)

I just couldn't resist the play-on-words. I thought of "Born-again
Newbie,"
amongst others, even one that gets right to the point, except that
that subject
line would be almost as long as the body of an ordinary question post.
I'm not
new to Linux - just to toot my own horn, I'm now sitting at the
computer I
bought in 1996 or so (at least that's the BIOS's date) for US$999.00,
with
an IBM/Cyrix 6x86P150+, 32 MB RAM, 3 GB /dev/hda, 4GB C: (.5), D:
(2.0), &
E (1.5) drive, Win95 on C:, Win2000 on D:, E: just vfat; 256MB swap &
2.5G /.
Running Slack 8.1 that I just d/l'd from one of the mirrors as iso,
and since
vehicle (the computer's name) doesn't boot from CD - heck, it has to
load a
device driver before it even _sees_ the CD - yes, you can install from
the
iso disk after booting with bare.i, install.1, ... install.5. Just to
set the
mood for what I'm about to say, let me mention that up until very
recently,
I was without any computing ability at all, at least for enough years
that
I had Slack 3.something that I had downloaded floppy by floppy at 56K.

But I got away from everything for awhile, and recently had a dream
gig fall
like manna from the sky - I actually have 3 computers in my office.
There's
a kinda diagram of what I have at
http://home.earthlink.net/~entheos_engineering/images/ABI_Entheos_LAN.gif
if
you're not on a sexu^H^H^H^Htextual browser, like links, like I am.
After all
that time away from the innards of the computer, and sitting here,
wondering
how I can look at the NG list and keep a post open simultaneously,
duh, alt-F2.
I'm almost having an orgasm. It's like I was 45 again. ;-)
Anyway, I have another computer, thunderbird, that I got from ebay
recently:
Athlon 1000, 256MB, 60 GB, SiS900 internal NIC, an ebay "4-port
Router" card,
which calls itself an "ASOUND INTERNAL Nway Switch AL500P Ver1.0", W2K
calls an
ADMTek AN983, and Redmon^H^H^Hhat reports as a DEC something or other,
with
a punctuation mark or two in the name, and otherwise won't talk to it;
and
just now, when I installed 9.1 off the ahem bought disk set ;-), the
install
program reported only one NIC, and said that it was loading tulip.o.
This is
a module, that gets loaded with the kernel, rather than a package,
which are
apps, right? This is confusing, because I don't remember Slack 8
saying anything
like that on vehicle. I also either haven't yet read or missed the
part about
how do I get my nic to tell me its name? Obviously, the ebay NIC is
working
fine (BTW, I've got DSL.) ifconfig is normal - my IP is 192.168.0.84,
because
thunderbird is running DHCP in W2K, apparently. But how do you look up
a
question like "how do I find out what my ethernet card calls itself
when the OS
calls?" But that's just for curiosity. Hmmm... I'm learning stuff as I
go along.
I just pinged myself, and got 127.0.0.1. So I have to go into the
config
files for all that stuff. I shouldn't be daunted, because last
millennium
I had 4 virtual hosts going simultaneously, and had made at least one
of
them appear in public, hand-configuring all the apache stuff. Boy,
those
were the days!
But I ramble. To get to the question: I loaded Redmon^H^H^Hhat 9.0
from two
different books, and 8.0 from "Redhat Linux for Dummies" - A few
months ago,
when I got the green light to set up a server on my own computer, I
dediced
to go for Linux, duh. But I figured there must be something more
recent, that
might work on my new computer (at the time) - that's the third one,
entheos-ws1,
with an Athlon 2400+, 512M, 80G, all W2k. I use Autocad. I'm a
contractor.
If anybody offers to pay me $3.95/day to look, I have a webcam. ;-) So
anyway, I decided to do it "the easy way," and get a book. Looking at
downloading a modern distro is like, yah, right. But Borders didn't
have
Slackware with a book. In fact, I thought that the disk set would come
with
a book - it must be on them. I also still have the 3.3 book and CDs.
It's
an embarrassment of riches. Sorry.
So, anyway, I don't like Redmon^H^H^Hhat, and RH9's X is giving me
some kind
of screen glitch, so, like I said, it's Slack Time. I feel like I'm
home
again. ;-)

But here's where I need some help - How do I start troubleshooting the
network
stuff in Slack 9.1? The only time I see any reference to the NIC is
during
setup, when it says something arcane about installing tulip.o (did I
mention
that)? There must be some kind of probing tools and something akin to
a howto
so I can get those NICs going like they're supposed to, but I don't
know where
to start to look for something which, for all I know at the moment, is
probably
as simple as turning on a switch somewhere. But all the RTFMs, books,
websites,
&c seem to cover everything but that. Or I haven't yet discovered
where to look.
It's kind of like finding a needle in a haystack, but there's a
possiblity that
the needle has been ground up and strewn haphazardly through the
stack, and
there's 3 different kinds of hay! Sorry for sniveling.

Anyways, everything other than that is cool - I just had a thought - I
don't
specifically remember if the one NIC that Slack sees in thunderbird
got on
line or not, and I don't want to reboot, because I'd lose _this_
connection.
So, anybody got a link just busting from their frontal lobe as to how
to go
at this?

Well, my next post will hopefully be a followup to this one, from one
comp.
or the other!

Thanks!
Rich

 

Rich Grise wrote:

Try cat /proc/pci

Richard

 

Naturally, right after hitting "Send" is when the answer
happens. /dev/cdrom/slackware-book/Slack8Book.html#_Toc5179744,
"Chapter 5. Network Configurationsaying, "Google won't
post to alt.os.linux.slackware, so would somebody repost this
to there?", but having found exactly what I was looking for
within seconds of posting, I realized that that'd be a little
em-bare-ass-ing.

I'm posting by google because the dipshits at Verizon don't
have the newsserver activated yet.

Thanks!
Rich

 

Hi everybody!

Naturally, 5 seconds after posting this long post, I bothered to go to
/mnt/cdrom/slackware-book/Slack8Book.html, and lo and behold!

Chapter 5. Network Configuration

Boy, that RTFM stuff is pretty cool!

I really don't mind hand-configuring stuff, as long as I've got the
instructions right in front of my nose. ;-)

Plus, I REALLY REALLY LOVE knowing precisely what my
machinery is doing. That W2K crap, and even, to a slightly
lesser extent, Redmon^H^H^Hhat, do so much automatic stuff
that I never know if some secret thing is going to come up and
bite me when I'm not looking!

Thanks for letting me rave.

I LOVE SLACKWARE!

Cheers!
Rich

 

Yes, but you aren't learning what your machine is doing. You're
simply learning an abstract model of what your machine is doing.
The fact that the Windoze abstract model is easier to learn is a
point in it's favour. The fact that the linux abstract model of
what the computer is doing is harder to learn is because it is 25
years old. With linux, esp. slackware, you are setting all kinds
of switches that don't even exist with windows and yet windows
rolls right along quite nicely without them, all alone at the top
of the world.

The _only_ professional reason linux exists is because windows only
has a gui and a gui, in some respects, gets in the way of a server.

cordially, as always,

rm