It is possible that the message below is being posted twice. If so, I apologize. I could not locate my first attempt to post it and am therefore trying again.

A couple of weeks ago I downloaded Mandriva 2008.1 (spring), and checked that the CD I burnt did indeed boot the machine and bring up the expected screens. But I found that I could not connect to the Internet with my ADSL account. I then used this CD to instal Mandriva 2008.1 on a hard disk, booted from the hard disk, found that all the applications I needed seemed to be present and functional, and I was also able to connect to the Internet right away!

Several attempts to connect to the net using only the CD have failed. If I monitor etho0 while it tries to connect, I see that some bytes are sent, and some are received, but always there is the message that the connection failed and I should verify the settings, which of course I have done several times.

Could some expert be kind enough to indicate where I am going wrong? I should mention that I am mainly a Windows user and my knowledge of Linux commands is minimal.

Thanking you.
r. singh


[moved from Installing Mandriva by spinynorman]

I'm lost. You say that you can't connect to the internet from the LiveCD?

But, you've installed from the LiveCD, and can now access the internet? So, if you have internet access from the installation you made, it probably won't matter that the LiveCD doesn't give you an internet connection.

The LiveCD is a minimal installation and therefore will not have every single application for your requirements to give you internet access, etc.

I have only one computer. If the hard disk fails, it would be nice to be able to connect to the net to check email, at least, which is why I am interested in connecting with the LiveCD. I thought even a minimal Linux installation would have the ability to connect to the net. Please enlighten me if this is not correct.

Thank you.
r.singh

It depends on what packages have been installed on the LiveCD by the producer, in this example Mandriva. If they don't install the packages you need, then you simply wouldn't be able to connect. With the advent of LiveDVD's now (Fedora), chances are that there are more packages installed, and thus the availability of the particular package that you need to connect to the internet might just be possible. It would be impossible to cater for everyones hardware and software requirements to fit on a CD/DVD. It shouldn't even be expected.

Every live CD I've ever tried has been able to connect painlessly to the net. I don't use ADSL though, but I really would expect that to work out of the box too.
When you connected your installed system to the internet, did you have to configure it at all? Add any extra packages etc? Or did it just work after install?

Thank you for your response.
Yes, I did need to configure the network on my installed system but did not have to add any extra packages. Exactly the same screens appear when I use the live CD to configure the network.
I should mention that I did permit updates after installing, but I have no idea what got updated. No updating is possible on the Live CD version, of course. I guess I will look elsewhere for a live CD off which I can connect to the net. May be I should explore Puppy linux?

r.singh

Extremely odd. But you can update the live CD if you want, it will just take a while and be heavy on resources. You may have to uninstall bulky software like OpenOffice and Firefox to reduce the number of updates you need. If you're really curious, you could try it out, run the live CD, uninstall big stuff, run the update and then try to connect to the internet using for example Konqueror. If that works, it could be that one of the updates fixed it. If not, it's even more mysterious.

Note that 2008.1 (and every other Mandriva live CD I've tried since 2005) has connected easily to my internet connection, which is however cable not ADSL. It might be worth searching for errata or bug reports related to ADSL. But bottom line, it should work.

There are many you could try. If the 2008.1 updates fixed it, you could try the Mandriva 2009.0 live CD, by which time (hopefully) the bug fixes have been incorporated into the live CD. Or just buy any magazine with a cover DVD, there are many out at the moment including Ubuntu, Suse, and others. They may be more user-friendly than Puppy.

Thank you for your response.

It occurs to me now that updating could not have had any thing to do with it, since in order to update I would have needed a connection to the net! So the mystery remains. I will fool around some more and report back if anything solves the problem. If I fail, I will try your other suggestions to obtain a live CD off which I can connect to the net in an emergency.

Success! But unfortunately I have no idea why.

As far as I know, I did exactly the same things I did on previous attempts to configure the network, but now it works. I have restarted the computer 3 times and succeeded every time. During the first unsuccessful attempt, today, the screen went black while the "testing your connection" window was working, and the Mandriva desktop re-loaded without any action on my part, and there was no connection. Then I deleted the ADSL connection and re-created it. After that all has been well. Perhaps ther is some hardware glitch in this old computer? At any rate it is good that nothing illogical is happening. I hope I have not wasted people's time in seeking help for this problem. I did so after trying on my own for days.

My thanks to all who took the trouble to respond.
r.singh

Cool, glad you got it working!