Alternate 8.04 install: no wired DHCP router connection

[swguy]

A fresh install of Ubuntu Studio Alternate 8.04 i386 on a Toshiba Satellite A205-SP5813 works perfectly except for internet connections. A wired DHCP connection was not detected during or after install if the cable was connected to the TP-LINK router. When the cable was connected directly to the cable modem on a re-install, the DHCP connection worked during and after install.

I found out that Network Manager was not installed, so network-manager and network-manager-gnome were installed via Synaptic Package Manager (SPM) and roaming was enabled for the wired connection. This resulted in the same behavior as before: no router connection, only cable modem connection.

The connection information with a router connection shows all zeros for IP address, broadcast address, subnet mask, default route, primary DNS, and secondary DNS. A ping of 192.168.1.1 returned zero packets.

Conversely, when running from the Live CD the router connection worked perfectly as Network Manager was already installed from the beginning. An install from the Live CD also worked. Thus, no hardware issues are present.

I have had the same issue with both Alternate 8.04 i386 and Alternate 8.04 AMD64 installs. I tried the standard guided install, LVM install, and LVM encrypted install. Only the Live CD versions work out of the box. Studio only comes in the Alternate form; no choice here.

What do I need to change to get NM to access the router?

[Builder]

I had a similar experience to that of swguy (he was much more detailed, I'm just supporting evidence). There were no problems with an Alternate Ubuntu 8.04 install, up & running fine, then I couldn't seem to download updates (in spite of having been told how many there were). I then went for the Edubuntu additions, and some of those must have been net-based packages as well, they didn't download. Eventually I located this thread, and began to realize the extent of the problem.

Of course, there _is_ an "alternate" methodology to the LTSP part (just install the package after a Desktop install), but I see no way to do also / instead do an encrypted LVM as download (well, OK, no _easy_ way, there's undoubtedly a hard way).

TIA for comments.