Member Avatar for esdel

Have read ALL the threads on the web folk complaining to BT and asking for help

Ubuntu loads OK into my Compaq Pressario.
Bootup CHOICE is EITHER Ubutu 10.10 OR WinXP

Win XP uses BT Home Hub 2.0 regularly and reliably via 2 ft Ethernet cable to Home Hub 2.0

But Ubuntu refuses to talk to Home hub or or

After 2 days solid efort the nearest we got was via IPv4 "Manual" (Autoroute DHCP does nothing)

The message we get is Firefox cannot find server ar start ubuntu.com

Using ping or trace route gives pmtu and !H whether we try firefox or or
or sudo dbclient3

We gat the same messages even with typos in these codes.

HELP!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by zelkea

Dani AI

Generated

Brief expert summary for (and note of 's idea)

The symptoms described — the BT Home Hub is reachable from Windows over a short Ethernet link but the same machine running Ubuntu 10.10 gets no usable network (DHCP failing, manual IPv4 not helping) — point to an OS-level networking or NIC-driver issue rather than a physical-router fault. 's VirtualBox workaround is a reasonable short-term bypass because the VM shares the working Windows stack, but it does not diagnose or fix native Ubuntu networking.

Key diagnostics (run on the Ubuntu side; interface name may differ from eth0)

ip link show
ip addr show
ip route show
cat /etc/resolv.conf
grep -v '^#' /etc/network/interfaces
sudo dhclient -v eth0
sudo tail -n200 /var/log/syslog | egrep -i 'dhcp|dhclient|eth|link|firmware'
dmesg | egrep -i 'eth|link|r816|rtl|firmware'
sudo ethtool eth0

What to look for and common fixes

  • If the interface shows DOWN or no carrier, try another cable/port and confirm driver messages in dmesg.
  • If the link is UP but no IP appears, DHCP is failing; dhclient -v and syslog will show the reason (timeout, no offer, or client error).
  • NetworkManager will ignore interfaces explicitly configured in /etc/network/interfaces; comment out manual entries so NetworkManager can manage the device, or configure the interface there for a static test using the same IP/gateway/DNS seen in Windows.
  • Driver/firmware errors in dmesg suggest installing the vendor driver or testing with a newer kernel.
  • Check router-side DHCP limits or MAC filtering if the NIC is repeatedly rejected.

Practical next steps

Use a recent live USB/CD to check whether a newer kernel/driver restores the link; if it does, upgrade or install an updated NIC driver on the installed system. VirtualBox is fine as a temporary workaround, but for a permanent solution address the DHCP/driver conflict shown by the diagnostics above.

Member Avatar for zelkea

Hey Esdel,

I don't have an answer for your original problem but I do have a potential workaround. I am running Ubuntu 10.10 virtual using Virtualbox www.Virtualbox.org off my windows box. This might get you past the challenges you are having since it is sitting on-top of your windows installation which is working fine. Thought I would toss that out the seeing that you haven't had any replies. It would take you about 15 minutes to test this out minus the download time.

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