FreeBSD's refusal to connect to the internet

[Alex de Kruijff]

On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 02:32:19PM +0100, Colin Ryan wrote:
> I have a small network of three computers in my office here.  Two Windows
> 2000, and one FreeBSD 5.1.  It's the BSD box that's giving me problems.

A ASCII image of how you network (needs to) looks would be helpfull. Is
this the situation?:

> My computers are connected to my modem via an ethernet switch. My modem is
> set up as a DHCP server, and my computers are DHCP enabled.
> When the input cable is disconnected from the modem (not the power, so it's
> still assigning IP addresses to my LAN) my BSD box picks up a valid internal
> IP address and subnet mask, it can ping and be pinged from all other
> computers on the LAN.

So your modum is also a router?

And this is the way your lan is made:
FreeBSD 5.1 (private IP) <----\
                              +--> (private IP) Modum  (public IP)
Windows 1 & 2 (private IP) <--/

> However, when the input cable is connected to my modem, so it's connected to
> the internet, my BSD box receives nothing.  When I do an ifconfig, it shows
> NO IP address and NO subnet mask.
> 
> I tried "dhclient rl0" which didn't work, so I checked /var/log/messages and
> was told "dhcp cannot bind to address; address already in use."  I then
> tried manually assigning an IP and subnet mask, which didn't work either.

What did you do exacly?

> Getting FreeBSD online has been nothing but an ordeal, and I am about ready
> to throw in the towel.  If anyone has any ideas, I would be very grateful
> indeed.

For now I sould stick with static IP adresses. You are ready to change
this to dynamic IP adresses

You could try and find other that have the same provider and modum and
see if they have a solution. You could do this by finding a local
FreeBSD group and ask questions there. You could use the FreeBSD website
as a starting point for this.

It may also be polible that a solution is already written out in a
artile or a use net posing. Google can assist you in finding these.

-- 
Alex

Articles based on solutions that I use:
http://www.kruijff.org/alex/index.php?dir=docs/FreeBSD/