Network Interfaces

(from http://forums.remote-exploit.org/showthread.php?t=1489)

So you have Backtrack running installed on a HDD, you can now configure your cards to use the network. You can also do this exactly the same if you are running the distro from the CD, but your settings will not be saved as the CD is a read only medium. There are plenty of different ways to configure these wired cards and plenty of tools to do it. What I am showing here is the generic Linux commands which should be the same for other distro's.

To turn on your ethernet network card (LAN):

ifconfig eth0 up

The eth0 is the name of the card, this could change depending on what hardware you have installed. To get a list of all adapters:

ifconfig -a

This will list all (-a) interfaces.

To get DHCP to assign a network address automatically from the DHCP server:

dhcpcd eth0

This will run it only on eth0, if you omitted the interface you would run the DHCP discovery process on all compatible cards.

NOTE: Auditor has a script called 'pump' which will do the same process.

Then check if you have an address:

ifconfig eth0

You should see an IP address in there somewhere.

If you want a static IP address instead of a dynamic one:

ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.2

Or whatever IP you want! If you want a variable subnet mask (beyond the scope of this thread!):

ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.224

To manually add a default gateway:

route add default gw 192.168.1.1 eth0

Of course you would replace the IP address with your default gateways, also the eth0 interface is not always needed!

To manually assign your DNS servers:

echo nameserver 192.168.1.1 > /etc/resolv.conf
echo nameserver 212.135.1.36 » /etc/resolv.conf

Note that the first line will OVERWRITE (>) the resolv.conf file, the second command will APPEND (») 'nameserver 212.135.1.36' onto the end of it!

All of this may have been done for you automatically with DHCP anyway, so to check:

cat /etc/resolv.conf

This will display to you the contents of the /etc/resolv.conf file.

To change your DHCP address if it has already been assigned you need to delete the DHCP file assigned to the card:

rm /etc/dhcpc/dhcpcd-eth0.pid

Although that may change based on the interfaces you have!

Then run the dhcpcd command again.

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