newbie debian network problem : no ping on eth0

Apologies for posting a novice level question here but I've
googled for an answer and not found one.

I have installed debian 3.1r2 onto a Dell Latitude CPi laptop
which has a Xircom pc card. The pc card is ok, I've used it
in a different (windows) PC.

I've set a static IP address for the laptop 192.168.6.33

I can ping the laptop from itself.

However I can't ping to or from the laptop on my home network.
When I try to send pings I get "destination host unreachable"
messages and eventually the kernel dumps.

The led comes on at my netgear switch and says link is ok.
But no flashing LED to suggest that it's transmitting any
ping packets.

If I type ifconfig to see what's happening it looks like
the ping packets are being sent via lo rather than eth0.
That deduction because the RX / TX packet counts increment for
the lo interface, while they're stuck at zero for eth0.


My route table looks ok (I think):

# route -n

Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.6.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
0.0.0.0 192.168.6.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

Can anyone suggest what might be the problem?

Alan Myler wrote:

> Apologies for posting a novice level question here but I've
> googled for an answer and not found one.
>
> I have installed debian 3.1r2 onto a Dell Latitude CPi laptop
> which has a Xircom pc card. The pc card is ok, I've used it
> in a different (windows) PC.
>
> I've set a static IP address for the laptop 192.168.6.33
>
> I can ping the laptop from itself.
>
> However I can't ping to or from the laptop on my home network.
> When I try to send pings I get "destination host unreachable"
> messages and eventually the kernel dumps.
>
> The led comes on at my netgear switch and says link is ok.
> But no flashing LED to suggest that it's transmitting any
> ping packets.
>
> If I type ifconfig to see what's happening it looks like
> the ping packets are being sent via lo rather than eth0.
> That deduction because the RX / TX packet counts increment for
> the lo interface, while they're stuck at zero for eth0.
>
>
> My route table looks ok (I think):
>
> # route -n
>
> Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
> 192.168.6.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
> 0.0.0.0 192.168.6.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0
>
> Can anyone suggest what might be the problem?
>



FYI, problem fixed by switching to a different pc card (3com).

Alan Myler wrote:
> Alan Myler wrote:
>
>> Apologies for posting a novice level question here but I've
>> googled for an answer and not found one.
>>
>> I have installed debian 3.1r2 onto a Dell Latitude CPi laptop
>> which has a Xircom pc card. The pc card is ok, I've used it
>> in a different (windows) PC.
>>
>> I've set a static IP address for the laptop 192.168.6.33
>>
>> I can ping the laptop from itself.
>>
>> However I can't ping to or from the laptop on my home network.
>> When I try to send pings I get "destination host unreachable"
>> messages and eventually the kernel dumps.
>>
>> The led comes on at my netgear switch and says link is ok.
>> But no flashing LED to suggest that it's transmitting any
>> ping packets.
>>
>> If I type ifconfig to see what's happening it looks like
>> the ping packets are being sent via lo rather than eth0.
>> That deduction because the RX / TX packet counts increment for
>> the lo interface, while they're stuck at zero for eth0.
>>
>>
>> My route table looks ok (I think):
>>
>> # route -n
>>
>> Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
>> 192.168.6.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
>> 0.0.0.0 192.168.6.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0
>>
>> Can anyone suggest what might be the problem?
>>
>
>
>
> FYI, problem fixed by switching to a different pc card (3com).
>
>

I was playing with this probllem for weeks. I was too stubborn to buy a
new NIC. I did and presto chango it works