Unable to connect to internet on slackware 14.1 (hathway connection)

Applications IP Networking
1

Hi,

I have a wired internet connection of hathway provider. I would like to use the connection on my desktop as well as my laptop. My desktop pc has windows 7 and yesterday I installed slackware 14.1 (full installation) on my lenovo 3000 n100 laptop.

Previously I had slacko puppy 5.7 installed on my laptop and I was able to use internet on it. Please note that hathway router has saved the MAC address of my desktop. Hence, I had to change the MAC address of laptop (when puppy linux was installed) to match my desktop's MAC address for making the internet connection work on laptop.

Now I have slackware 14.1 installed and have followed the documentation provided to setup my network, without success. After going through netconfig, I have edited /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf and made the following changes:

# Config information for eth0:
IPADDR[0]=""
NETMASK[0]=""
USE_DHCP[0]="yes"
DHCP_HOSTNAME[0]=""
HWADDR[0]="00:01:23:45:67:89"

where HWADDR[0] matches my desktop's MAC address.

After this edit, I ran /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 eth0_start to make connection. This too seems to succeed. It finds and IPv4 address and the child process goes to background.

But when I open firefox and try connecting to google.com, it fails. I have also checked ifconfig output to find that eth0 does take the MAC address specified in HWADDR[0].

I have also tried using networkmanager shipped with slackware (from XFCE dekstop) without success.

What could be the problem? Thanks in advance

2

I read your post with interest. Although I know nothing about "Hathway router" I would like to ask you why you think it's okay to set two different computers to the same MAC address? Can you please post the link or documentation that tells you to do that.

Perhaps your Hathway router is not a real router as we would all know it but, if it is a normal router, setting two devices to the same MAC address would be one sure way to confuse the hell out of it and perhaps cause it to lock out one of the devices.

Please explain why you are setting two MAC addresses identical.

3

the problem with the provider is that they store the MAC address of the pc the router was first connected to and allows connection only on that pc. I have a PC and a laptop. The router was first connected to my desktop and identifies that only. That's why i cannot access internet on my laptop or any other pc through the connection I have.

I read about this somewhere, that we can clone MAC address on other machines to match the recognized MAC address. So I changed the MAC address and it worked. I have used it on my laptop with windows and puppy linux. Now I have removed both and installed slackware. But, I can't seem to get it working in slackware. That's the fix I'm in.

4

Could you configure one of them as a proxy server for the other?

5

Do you mean setting up my desktop as proxy server for laptop?

6

Yes, is that an option?

7

But, wouldn't that mean I'll have to keep my desktop on to have internet on Laptop?

I'm posting more details which might help you. Here are some commands which i ran and their results

bash-4.2# /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1     
Polling for DHCP server on interface eth0:
dhcpcd[1594]: version 6.0.5 starting
dhcpcd[1594]: eth0: soliciting an IPv6 router
dhcpcd[1594]: eth0: soliciting a DHCP lease
dhcpcd[1594]: timed out
dhcpcd[1594]: allowing 8 seconds for IPv4LL timeout
dhcpcd[1594]: eth0: probing for an IPv4LL address
dhcpcd[1594]: eth0: no IPv6 Routers available
dhcpcd[1594]: eth0: using IPv4LL address 169.254.65.79
dhcpcd[1594]: eth0: adding host route to 169.254.65.79 via 127.0.0.1
dhcpcd[1594]: eth0: adding route to 169.254.0.0/16
dhcpcd[1594]: forked to background, child pid 1635


bash-4.2# ifconfig
eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 169.254.65.79  netmask 255.255.0.0  broadcast 169.254.255.255
        inet6 fe80::21b:38ff:fe09:7bc8  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether 00:24:1d:f2:23:9e  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 94  bytes 25512 (24.9 KiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 66  bytes 9402 (9.1 KiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>
        loop  txqueuelen 0  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 216  bytes 15804 (15.4 KiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 216  bytes 15804 (15.4 KiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0


bash-4.2# lspci | grep Ethernet
05:01.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)


bash-4.2# dmesg | grep -i eth0
[    7.574621] 8139too 0000:05:01.0 eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0x00012000, 00:1b:38:09:7b:c8, IRQ 21
[  120.374580] 8139too 0000:05:01.0 eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0xC1E1
[  229.976611] 8139too 0000:05:01.0 eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0xC1E1
[  271.207805] 8139too 0000:05:01.0 eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0xC1E1
[  311.115483] 8139too 0000:05:01.0 eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0xC1E1

Please note here that I have also tried using network manager (added in slackware 14.1) without success. The commands i ran for networkmanager are:

ifconfig eht0 down hw ether 00:24:1D:F2:23:9E
ifconfig eht0 up
/etc/rc.d/rc.networkmanager start

Also, I tried using wicd with similar issue. And, I could not find a way to clone MAC on wicd GUI.

What i think is that if Hathway had not restricted the connection to one pc (i.e., by storing MAC address and giving connection to that PC only), slackware would connect without any problems. But because I have to change my laptop's MAC address to match my other computer's, maybe slackware isn't reading it correctly (i.e., it's trying to connect by default MAC), whereas Puppy Linux did.

What do you think?

8

I even tried reinstalling slackware 14.1 and selecting network manager as default during setup only. That too did not work. Fed up, I have installed Ubntu 13.04 and did the same process to connect through network manager applet, with no hassels (was able to configure/connect within seconds). It just doesn't work with slackware on my laptop.

Is it because of some architectural difference or maybe something related to network confguration is disabled by default in slackware whereas is enable in other distros (say ubuntu) by default?