cannot ping anything

[Greg Barniskis]

Derek Ragona wrote:
> See if you can ping your own interface.  You should be able to ping it 
> on both the loop back 127.0.0.1 and the 192.168.1.128 address.

Well, he said he'd tried the loopback, but it's worth double 
checking of course. A finger fumble and a resulting false negative 
can lead to hours of useless troubleshooting. Fun for some, pain for 
most!

The OP wrote:
>>>> The output of netstat and ifconfig aboe are from today.  I began 
>>>> having this problem yesterday, and left the box on over night.
>>>> Yesterday's output was different in that the BSD box had a different 
>>>> IP address, 192.168.1.122.  That is fine I understand that the box 
>>>> is communicating with the router and negotiating leases when they 
>>>> expire.  However, why has the gateway to 192.168.1.1 changed from 
>>>> link#1 to the MAC address of my router.  I am certain that if  I 
>>>> restart the computer that same gateway will revert to link#1.

If I'm not mistaken (warning: lately I have been mistaken more than 
is usual ;) you're going to get the link#1 indicator prior to your 
box having had any reason to arp for the router, meaning "generally, 
that IP address should be somewhere in that direction". You'll see 
the MAC address after the box has tried and succeeded with an arp 
request, meaning "that IP address is precisely right there".

That the indicator changes to a MAC address is a sure sign of basic 
NIC functionality as well as cabling that transmits and receives OK, 
at least some of the time.

>>>> I was previously using this HD in another machine to test IPF, with NAT also, and it worked peerfectly there. 

The fact that you can use arp and DHCP but not ping smells like 
there is leftover ipf/nat configuration or related kernel/module 
issues that are preventing appropriate packet flow. Ensuring that 
such features are disabled is the only thing I can suggest short of 
reinstalling, which I am fairly confident would solve the problem.

-- 
Greg Barniskis, Computer Systems Integrator
South Central Library System (SCLS)
Library Interchange Network (LINK)
<gregb at scls.lib.wi.us>, (608) 266-6348