I can ping 'localhost' as well as the ip i assigned to my linux box. I can't ping any other machine on the LAN even if i specify their ip's. need more information?

Hi - IP is ok on other machines? Can they ping the 'linux' box? Are you sure about connection? Can you simplify the connection at all to eliminate that? Do any other IP services work? Hope one of these questions is helpful.

The other machine I'm using is Winblows98. The two machines are connected using a crossover cable. (the cable is fine, trust me) the windows box is not able to ping the linux box, but can ping itself. I've run diagnostics on all the network cards and they all check out fine. All I want to do is telnet (which wont work) into linux from windows so i dont have to keep swaping the monitor :)

Have you got your subnet mask right? If the subnet masking is wrong IP might be thinking that the Win98 machines are not local - so cant ping out and cant reply to pings. What is the message you receive from the Win98? "Request timed out"? and on the linux "Host unknown"? Hope this is helpful

Try adding the FQDN, IP address and hostname of both the linux and wintel machines to your linux /etc/hosts file. One other cause may be the inability of one or both of your NICs to use a Xcable.

I have new information!!!! If I ping from 98 box to linux box, they type 'ifconfig eth0' RX overrrun:### increases. the 98 box says that the packets timed out. If I ping from linux box to 98 box and set ping to wait forever for an answer, the return packets show up between 6 and 20 seconds later. I know that some information is getting through because during the ping just mentioned above, I also did a tcpdump. the MAC address of the 98 box showed up in the dump. I have lots of text files that I can send via email for further information: copy of proc/net/dev file, ifconfig output, copy of the ioports file, route output, copy of the hosts file, copy of the interrupts file, copy of the rc.config file, tcpdump output. my icq # is 32021745 Thanks, Greg