This workaround assumes that you have already installed a driver for your Network Interface Card (NIC). First you’ll need to check the information of your network devices. It can be obtained with a ifconfig –a command
root@icpep:~# ifconfig –a
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:5b:fc:b9:f0
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:110081 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:84931 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:114824506 (109.5 Mb) TX bytes:9337924 (8.9 Mb)
Interrupt:10 Base address:0xc000
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:40 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:40 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:3162 (3.0 KiB) TX bytes:3162 (3.0 KiB)
If you typed ifconfig or /sbin/ifconfig without the –a suffix you won’t be able to see eth1 interface as your network card does not yet have a valid IP address or route. First setup is when you want to automatically obtain an IP address from your DHCP(or Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server.
DHCP
Setting a DHCP on slackware is not that hard, all you need to do is run a netconfig command. This will offer you ways to configure your NIC and just select DHCP.
STATIC
If you want to use a static IP address on your slackware machine you can do it on the netconfig command or you can edit /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf.
root@icpep:~# nano /etc/rc.d/rc.inet
Based on the command that you made above(ifconfig -a), you can edit the interface and assign an IP address. In my case,
# Config information for eth1:
IPADDR[1]="192.168.1.254"
NETMASK[1]=255.255.255.0""
USE_DHCP[1]=""
DHCP_HOSTNAME[1]=""
and below add your default gateway,
# Default gateway IP address:
GATEWAY="192.168.1.1"
you can now save the file and your network should be running. If not you can run the command,
root@icpep:~# /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 start
