internet connection on Kubuntu Hardy

[Lisi Reisz]

On Monday 13 October 2008 15:42:16 Thorny wrote:
> > Can anyone offer any advice?  Or recommend another distro that would
> > fulfill the criteria?  She needs this laptop and I have been trying to
> > get it going and fulfilling the criteria since the middle of August.  She
> > is beginning, with some justification, to ask why I don't just use
> > Windows.
>
> I have no experience with networkmanager but I have seen it written
> several places as "network mangler" by people who have had frustrations
> with it.
>
> To make sure you are really back to a place where manual config could work
> perhaps it is necessary to go lower level than the K frontend. You could
> try purging networkmanager, it's the deamon that tries to keep a
> connection always up and which has caused lots of people difficulties,
> since Debian Etch if I remember correctly.
>
> With it purged, you should be able to manually configure your ethernet
> interface in /etc/network/interfaces with auto; inet; dhcp and when you
> restart networking it should ask the router's DHCP server for an IP
> address. ...or at a terminal (with sudo if appropriate on your system)
> ifconfig (interface) down followed by ifconfig (interface) up. That should
> read the manual configuration ...or, at least, drop some error message.

I have for the moment shelved this, and someone else is working on it for me, 
but I am very grateful for all the help.

I may yet have to come back too, if he doesn't succeed either.

I gather that I have perhaps made it difficult for people to assess my skill 
levels.  I know nothing about wireless on Linux other than that people say it 
is tricky.  Until now I have never had an occasion where I needed to use it.  
(I use homeplug on my own network.)  But I do know/understand a reasonable, 
tho' not a large, chunk of the rest.  My knowledge is patchy.  Some things - 
things that I have managed to do in the past or that someone has explained 
clearly - I understand.  Thorny has suggested that his original email in this 
thread might have been above my head.  In fact, I understood it perfectly and 
had in fact already tried to do it, but had failed.  It is the methid I use 
in my day to day contact with my network.  Some of the other suggestions I 
had not met or did not understand/know.

And I was panicking, so that I was not using either my brains or the knowledge 
I have got by the end.  (E.g., it was not until after I had sent my last 
missive that I realised that I could get on line by booting to the command 
line.  With Kubuntu out of the way the network was accessible.

Those who have good memories and were reading the thread will remember taht I 
said to Willy that I had the experience but he the knowledge.  I know a lot 
about computers compared to teh man in teh street, but not a lot about then 
compared to you lot.

I am sad that I have not succeeded in getting wireless going, since that 
bugbear still lurks out there.   But I think that I'll get it going on a 
Debian system or something else that I find comparatively easy before I try 
Kubuntu again.  Unless, of course, I get this particular problem back.

There is something in my genes that has problems with Kubuntu, or something in 
Kubuntu's genes which has problems with me. :-(

But many thanks all of you for your help.

Lisi