connecting to home network and internet with new install

[sam3]

Linux is completely new to me, so be gentle.
I have installed debian/linux recently and have had zero success in getting onto my home network (2 pc's and a few wireless laptops- all Windows)

i have cable internet through a Motorola cable modem which feeds my linksys broadband router.

On 3 separate attempts the debian installer tried to autoconfig dhcp and failed.
I figured it was no big deal and i would be able to manually configure later.

I have messed with the network settings and have looked at the help files and other user threads that were posted. the GUI for network setting looks so easy, but alas i am more ignorant of the nomenclature than i should be.

A poster named zinger, about a year ago, looked like he had the same difficulty, POSTED:"Networking not functional in new Debian installation" (unfortunately his last entry said he was giving up on linux and going back to windows). If anyone can help it would be great.

SYSTEM/Administration/Network: Under connections it just reads: Wired connection address: dhcp - it does not have my actual network card listed as some tutorials have shown.
Under General my pc name(host) is just debian by default and not sure what the domain name should be.
Not sure about DNS entries (servers, search domains?)
Hosts? no entries here either.

[chevalier3as]

Can you tell us the result of the ifconfig command !

[sam3]

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0a:e6:a1:6e:f0
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets: 0 blah blah 0
TX blah blah all zeros
collisions: zeros again
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX (0.0 B)
Interrupt:19 Base address 0xd400

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127:0.0.1 Mask: 255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX Packets:8 then zeros
TX packets:8 zeros again
collision 0
RX bytes560 (560.0 B) TX bytes:560 (560.0 B)

[chevalier3as]

I can't tell you what's the problem from that, but try these commands and tell me the result:
ifconfig eth0 up
dhclient eth0
ifconfig eth0

[sam3]

ifconfig eth0 up: did nothing
ifconfig eth0: same as i replied for ifconfig without the lo part
dhclient eth0: Int. sys. cons copyright and such
Listening on LPF/eth0/00:0a:e6:a1:6e:f0
Sending on [same as above]
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5
ditto interval 14, 13, 7, 12, 10
NoDHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.

[rcgreen]

Just for kicks, try a different ethernet cable. If other computers
are working with this router, it's unlikely to be a router problem,
but your system is broadcasting a request for DHCP and getting
no offers, so first, check the wire.

[sam3]

okay, swapped the wire with my existing pc already on the router. both work with the other computer but not with the linux one. I added a different network card to see if the existing card was bad. still no DHCPOFFERS received.

[coopstah13]

could be a bug in debian driver, what is your card?

/sbin/lspci | grep -i eth