[plug] Debian Sarge & network problems

[Craig Ringer]

Tim Bowden wrote:

> My main problem however is getting the network to work.  For some reason
> eth0 seems to be getting an ipv6 address (as is lo) [snip]  Where might
 > the ipv6 address be coming from?

If the IPv6 addresses are in the 'host' or 'link' scopes, then they're 
assigned by the kernel and don't imply any network connectivity at all. 
If you bring up an interface on an IPv6-enabled kernel it'll be 
automatically assigned an address in the link scope, as the address is 
calculated from the MAC address.

If you're seeing IPv6 addresses in the 'global' or 'site' scopes, then 
there's something funny going on, because under most circumstances those 
will be calculated from router advertisements received by your host. The 
exception is if you've hard-coded an IPv6 address for the interface 
(unlikely) or (maybe) if you're running an IPv6 route advertisment daemon.

> If I set the interface to be statically configured, it works fine.

Odd.

> I
> can ping my own network card

That means very little. I think you'll find that pinging your own 
interface actually goes through the kernel loopback interface, and it 
can work even if the hardware for the card is mostly broken.

Try this: on one console, run 'tethereal -i lo' and on another run 'ping 
<your-NIC's-address>'. You'll note that the packets are actually passing 
through the loopback interface.

A more interesting test would be to ping a _remote_ machine after 
statically configuring your interface.

> but that then leaves me with the final part
> of the problem.  Even when I set the default gateway and the route table
> looks good, I can't ping past my own ipadddress.
> 
> Any ideas?

Network driver breakage?  Meryon noted that he had issues with this 
particular kernel, and what you describe would fit with a broken NIC or 
driver quite nicely.

--
Craig Ringer