While in Wellington last weekend I had the opportunity to have a couple of linux "experts" take a look at my notebook and figure out what was happening with my notebook's network card. They were certain that they could get it working. On connecting another notebook running linux to mine, they could see pings from mine to theirs were being sent, but the replies were not getting back to my notebook. And pings to mine from theirs weren't being returned, but I'm not sure at what point they were failing.
All sorts of configurations were being looked at, and to be honest I have very little understanding of what they were looking at and why. They concluded that everything was fine and that the resolution would come from a kernel update and using different drivers from the 8139too that was being used.
While waiting for the kernel update they tried knoppix (3.3 point something) which I had done myself previously while trying to fix it myself, and they saw the same behaviour from the ping packets. So then they ran a fedora rescue install - TA DA - pings worked fine !!!
While the kernel update and other drivers may have worked under mandrake, or may not, their conclusion was buggy driver code. I'm happy to have found a solution to my problem, and have subsequently got a functioning install of fedora on my notebook. Didn't go totally smoothly though, gave a "you do not have sufficient disk space" message, which I quickly found the resolution to on bugzilla. Now I can get on the net with it, access files on the network at home and work, so am very happy. Expect postings in coming days - I have more puzzles to solve yet.
So I'd like to thank everyone here who made suggestions / supported me / gave links / didn't tell me to go away / generally did what they could to get me there. I am very appreciative of all your efforts. In the end it really needed the "experts" doing in person what happened last weekend - as would have happened I'm sure with members of this group at Robert's place in a few weeks at the gentoo installfest.
Cheers, Roger
