WIRED networking woes

[fredbird67]

Yes, you would think that WIRED network cards just work right out of the box with Ubuntu or any other distro you care to name. And it did just fine for the longest time, but this morning, I could not, for the life of me, get online on my Ubuntu box. I tried a live CD of Linux Mint, and it couldn't connect, either, so the problem is obviously not with Ubuntu.

I tried my wife's Windows XP (ick!) box and it connected just fine. In order to test whether the problem was with my card or my cable, I plugged the cable into our laptop, which also runs XP (my wife insisted on it coming with Windows -- boo hiss!), and I was able to get online with it just fine, too, and disabled its wireless network adapter to test it out, too.

I them pulled my computer out of the desk and saw that the yellow light was lit steady and the green light was blinking very rapidly nonstop, even with the computer turned off. The network card I have is actually built-in to my motherboard, an SiS 630.

Can ifconfig fix this or is my motherboard's network jack all shot to heck and in need of replacement with an actual card?

Thanx in advance,
Fred in St. Louis

[Sam Lars]

It's normal for the light to blink if the network cable is plugged in. I would suggest trying Windows on the machine to see if the network works then. It sounds like a hardware issue, though, if it just suddenly stopped working and doesn't work with Live CDs, and the cable is good.

[fredbird67]

Well, never mind -- it seems to be working just now, and in fact, I'm doing this from my Ubuntu box, on which, in fact, I have just Ubuntu and nothing else on here. I have no idea at all just what went wrong, but when I looked back there and saw the green light lit just steadily, I figured it was probably OK, so I booted up, and it's just fine now.

Gotta get to church...
Fred in St. Louis