The FuzzyBlog!
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Ack! When TCP Attacks!!!

I just ran into one of those perplexing predicaments.  After being exiled from my house to Starbucks for a house showing (that sale I mentioned recently?  fell thru; sigh) and doing a bunch of work while being professionally caffeinated, I wanted to upload what I did.  So I booted up my Linux laptop and all was goodness until I tried to scp (secure copy) stuff to my server and got nothing.  Huh?  What?.  Tried my faithful network girlfriend, ping, and got this disturbing error message:

connect: network is unreachable

I twiddled around for a bit and did

Original IM Transcript:

DemitriousK: whats the q?
fuzzygroup: on phone.  are you around for a bit ?
DemitriousK: dunno
DemitriousK: try in a bit :-)
fuzzygroup: pcmcia network card stopped working totally.  2nd one has same symptoms.
DemitriousK: eww
DemitriousK: symptoms?
fuzzygroup: sec
fuzzygroup: restarting
fuzzygroup: dumped mock gf phone call
DemitriousK: umm... i dont know if thats good or bad?
fuzzygroup: getting a working network card is more important
DemitriousK: :-)
fuzzygroup: the link light does not light up
fuzzygroup: and a ping gives "connect: network is unreachable"
fuzzygroup: i tried another linksys card (diff model but I think drivers are the same) and had the same symptoms
fuzzygroup: I can order another exactly the same but thought some trouble shooting was called for before the $119 was spent
DemitriousK: wifi?
fuzzygroup: nope
fuzzygroup: just wired
fuzzygroup: and i confirmed that the cable is live
DemitriousK: try a diff net cable?
DemitriousK: o
DemitriousK: hmm
fuzzygroup: lol.
fuzzygroup: where would error logs be to start ?
DemitriousK: /var/log/
DemitriousK: probably messages
DemitriousK: type 'dmesg'
DemitriousK: and check the end of the output
fuzzygroup: all looks good
fuzzygroup: can't paste it to you. sigh.
fuzzygroup: wait
fuzzygroup: ah ha
fuzzygroup: "timed out waiting for a valid dhcp server message"
fuzzygroup: how do I manually bind an ip address ?
fuzzygroup: ifconfig
DemitriousK: ifconfig eth0 up <ip>
DemitriousK: route add -net default gw <gateway>
DemitriousK: and add 'nameserver <name server ip address>' to /etc/hosts
DemitriousK: nameserver 66.122.168.68 works
fuzzygroup: mission control we have ping.  repeat.  we have ping.
DemitriousK: :-)
DemitriousK: i got a dollar. i got a dollar. i got a dollar hey hey hey hey
DemitriousK: !!!
fuzzygroup: getting a problem on the route command though
fuzzygroup: lol.
fuzzygroup: I typed
fuzzygroup: nvr mind
fuzzygroup: and we have dns
fuzzygroup: :-)
fuzzygroup: my laptop says thank you.
fuzzygroup: may ability to upload the work I did at starbucks says thank you.
fuzzygroup: I bet I need to restart my router / gateway.
fuzzygroup: Sigh.
fuzzygroup: thanks man!
fuzzygroup: I'll write that up and cross link it to your site.
fuzzygroup: useful to have on hand for the next time.
DemitriousK: hehe
DemitriousK: :-)
DemitriousK: yea ive been in that predicimate before :-)
fuzzygroup: "When the DHCP don't DHCP"