[lug] attbi @Home blues

[Sean LeBlanc]

On 12-17 18:39, Rick Casey wrote:
> I'm a victim of the recent ATT "migration" of their Excite at Home
> customers to their attbi network. Effectively I've had no connection
> since Dec 1, and hope to find some help here. I won't get started on
> how lame ATT's "customer service" has been; they seem incapable of
> providing the few crucial pieces of technical info for configuring
> TCP/IP in Windoz since the migration. I have a dual booted machine,
> but haven't been able to connect using M$ Windoz or Linux.
> 
> I've scoured the past BLUG mail archives, and the Linux How-To on
> cable modem setup, but nothing seems to be quite current or local
> enough for this current problem. The recent thread here about
> 'misconfigured BROADCAST addr' was close, but incomplete.
> 
> Can anyone help me with the entire Network configuration in RH 6.2
> Linux (upgrading soon to 7.0), i.e. the eth0 interface, gateway, etc.?
> 
> I'm sure this is a simple problem for some on this list. What I don't
> understand is how Windoz can use DHCP to get an IP address when the
> only info it has is a Workgroup name of attbi.com? In Linux you must
> put in *some* IP address in that eth0 interface.
> 
> Appreciate any help; hopefully some others out there are in this boat,
> and would benefit from this thread.

So are you saying you can or cannot get a connection via Windoze? 

In any case, CLUE had DHCP as their KISS session last week, and I believe it
was said that DHCP client uses broadcasting to find a DHCP server. That's
how it can find DHCP server w/o knowing anything(or much) about the network.

I'm not sure I can help you with the ENTIRE config of RH 6.2, as I use 6.1
for my firewall, but I can give it a shot - I use pump, BTW.  First you want
to be sure you backup your /etc/resolv.conf, and *probably* your /etc/hosts.
I know the default is to write over your /etc/resolv.conf with new info
obtained via pump. There are options to pump to change this behavior, but
anyway...

Here is my /etc/pump.conf. Pretty much right out of pump's man page:
domainsearch "lakwod3.co.home.com"
retries 3
device eth1 {
  nodns
}

If you only have one NIC, then you can probably just put in the retries
line. I left domainsearch in there, even though I think it's no longer
valid.

Then I run pump -i eth0. If it works, your eth0 interface should be set up
properly and a new resolv.conf will get written. After, you
can do a pump --status and an ifconfig eth0 to see how things are.

You should see something like this:

# pump --status
Device eth0
        IP: 12.253.150.137
        Netmask: 255.255.248.0
        Broadcast: 255.255.255.255
        Network: 12.253.144.0
        Boot server 12.242.19.34
        Nameservers: 216.148.227.68 204.127.202.4 12.242.19.50
        Renewal time: Fri Dec 21 19:46:25 2001
        Expiration time: Sat Dec 22 07:46:25 2001

# ifconfig eth0
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:A0:24:04:94:E0
          inet addr:12.253.150.137  Bcast:255.255.255.255
Mask:255.255.248.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:20659085 errors:65 dropped:0 overruns:37 frame:65
          TX packets:3263254 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:28030 txqueuelen:100
          Interrupt:5 Base address:0x210

If Windoze is working for you, then this should work in Linux. If it's not,
then that's another story. As for their "customer service", yeah, I think
nearly all their customers has experienced something similar. I always
remember George Carlin's bit about "servicing the customer" whenever I deal
with them. :) 

I think I remember one individual at CLUE saying he finally had to get his
modem changed out because it was a modem that didn't work after changeover -
it took some convincing to get AT&T to believe him, though. This may not be
your case.

-- 
Sean LeBlanc:seanleblanc at attbi.com Yahoo:seanleblancathome 
ICQ:138565743 MSN:seanleblancathome AIM:sleblancathome 
Justice is incidental to law and order. 
-J. Edgar Hoover 
Management QOTD:Look, it doesn't matter if the change makes things better or
worse as long as we take the bull by horns and finesse the
global development.