8.2 networking

[dep]

this is nuts.

i spent the better part of two days trying to get the nvidia driver 
to work with 8.2, no joy (worked fine with the xfree-4.30 i compiled 
for suse 7.2), so i replaced it with a radeon which at least does 
work, though gears reports a scarcelt bkistering 200fps. but that's a 
*minor* problem.

*major* problems include the install hanging while "Detecting modems 
. . ." leaving me to try to configure everything by hand or, worse, 
yast2. i do have the thing running now, though i cannot figure out to 
get kde to stop asking me to create a secret key everytime i start x. 
no, i don't want to, not now, not ever.

but the real killer is the networking, which just flat doesn't work 
no way nohow. again, this is all on hardware that worked flawlessly 
with 7.2. nic is an rtl8139, for which there are two mutually 
exclusive kernel modules, 8139too.o and rtl8139.o. i have tried each 
one, to the same effect.

i have tried both a fixed ip address, which is how i had it set up in 
7.2, and dhcp. dhcp times out. the fixed ip produces an unremarkable 
output from ifconfig. i can ping the machine itself via that fixed 
ip, but i cannot ping the gateway.

route *ought* to report this, instantly:
Destination ? ? Gateway ? ? ? ? Genmask ? ? ? ? Flags Metric Ref ? 
Use Iface
192.168.0.0 ? ? * ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 255.255.255.0 ? U ? ? 0 ? ? ?0 ? ? ? ?
0 eth0
default ? ? ? ? 192.168.0.1 ? ? 0.0.0.0 ? ? ? ? UG ? ?0 ? ? ?0 ? ? ? ?
0 eth0

instead, it reports this:
192.168.0.0 ? ?depoffice.local 255.255.255.0 ?UG ? 0 ? 0 ? ?0 ? eth0
192.168.0.0 ? ? * ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 255.255.255.0 ? ? ? U ? ? 0 ? 0 ? ?0 ?
?eth0
default ? ? ? ? 192.168.0.1 ? ? 0.0.0.0 ? ? ? UG ? ?0 ? ?0 ? ? 0 ? 
eth0

and this only after waiting nearly a minute.

route -n reports the same thing, only instantly and with "0.0.0.0" 
instead of "default."

/etc/sysconfig/network/routes contains this:
"default ?192.168.0.1 - -"

and if course i cannot connect to the frigging internet.

i'd happily crack opem /etc and change values by hand, but i see that 
suse in its infinite wisdom has reshuffled the configuration files 
yet again, such that, for instance, routes have been moved from 
/etc/route.conf to the rather more deeply hidden file mentioned above.

i have swapped out every piece of hardware in the chain, including 
cables, and i have put other machines on the same chain to the 
gateway; in the former case there was no improvement and in the 
latter case, machines running 7.2 have no problem connecting. and 
this machine worked just fine with 7.2 as late as tuesday morning as 
well.

anybody know what i need to edit to change the configuring from 
nonworking to working? the values i currently have in the 
configuration files are yast-supplied.

tia.
-- 
dep
 http://www.linuxandmain.com