Hi, I'm fairly new to Linux and just switched from SuSE to Debian 2.2.19pre17 a few days ago. I have a Dell Inspiron 7000 notebook. I've tried very hard to solve this problem on my own, but the solution continues to escape me.
Right now, my /etc/network/interfaces file includes the following lines (excluding comments): auto lo iface lo inet loopback My understanding is that the "auto lo" line is supposed to activate the loopback interface at boot time. But evidently it doesn't. After I boot and log in as root, if I ping the localhost at 127.0.0.1, I get the error message: neighbor table overflow At this point, the routing table (route -n command) doesn't list the loopback interface, and I must manually activate and add it with the lines: ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1 route add 127.0.0.1 lo After doing this, I no longer receive the overflow error and can ping the localhost. Strangely (to me), if I comment out the "auto lo" line in /etc/network/interfaces and reboot, I can then successfully ping the loopback address, indicating that the interface has been automatically activated. (So "auto lo" is evidently shutting it down. I wish I could find more thorough instructions for configuring /etc/network/interfaces.) Although the interface has been activated automatically, I still have to add it to the routing table using the above route command. But, of course, I don't want to have to add the route manually every time I reboot. All of the above was learned while I was trying to figure out my original problem, which is this: After successfully connecting to my ISP via serial modem (and after manually adding the loopback interface), the routing table is as follows: Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 286.115.220.139 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 ppp0 127.0.0.1 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 lo 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 I can ping 286.115.220.139 as well as my machine's local network IP address at 192.168.1.1, but I can't ping my ISP's DNS servers or anywhere else on the internet. So, for several days I've basically been trying to figure out how to connect to the internet. I only have a bare minimum installation and desperately need to add more functionality via apt-get downloads. I tried to follow the installation instructions exactly, but now I'm stuck and feeling helpless. Sincere thanks for any suggestions, Charles
