I'm having a little trouble getting the network connection to work correctly in KM R5D1...it apparently isn't finding the DNS.

I successfully installed Firefox using aptitude (which demonstrates the internet connection is working), and attempted to visit www.yahoo.com...and got nothing.

So, I got a hunch it might be the DNS, and used nslookup to find out Yahoo's IP address (209.73.186.238)...put that address into Firefox, and Yahoo started loading, albeit slowly, because it had to wait to time out on every image that was going to be downloaded from somewhere other than Yahoo.com.

I can't seem to find any utility for configuring the ethernet connection, any ideas how to tell it the address of my DNS?

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R5F1 - Dell P4 2.4Ghz 500MB - PVR250 x 2 - GeForce FX 5200 - Onboard sound/NIC 80GB ATA/250GB ATA/400GB SATA

Well, I ran netcardconfig, and switched to using a static IP instead of DHCP, but it hasn't done any good. When I told it my gateway, it came up with the correct entries for DNS (the gateway itself, and the address of the actual nameserver)...but still nothing is actually able to translate names into IPs and connect. There was one setting (broadcast address) I didn't understand, and can't seem to find any information about, Windows doesn't seem to use one...any idea what's supposed to go there, or how else there could be a DNS problem when NAT is working correctly, and the namesevers are set correctly?

The default is usually good for the broadcast address. It's just the address used for "calling all cars" type of requests in your local segment. There could be any number of reasons that name resolution won't work, from a minor configuration snafu, through settings on you LAN router, and all the way to your ISPs name server is hosed.

Perhaps if you provided more details on your network setup we might be able to offer more concrete suggestions.

I'm connected to my Actiontec GT701-WG DSL router through an old-fashioned hub, shouldn't be any problems there, it works fine for all the other computers on the network.

The myth box's networking card is apparently an onboard feature of the Nvidia GeForce 6150/NForce 430 chipset on my motherboard (Asus M2NPV-VM CSM). I know others have had success using this board, but the only post I've seen about it was somebody that used a wireless card to connect it, so I'm not sure where that puts me.

I tried this same box with Ubuntu Edgy earlier, and also had some odd network problems, though they were slightly different (Firefox 2.0 couldn't connect to the internet, and Synaptic was having trouble updating the list of available updates, but apt-get worked fine, as did Konqueror once I managed to install it with apt-get). Others had also reported problems with Firefox 2.0 under that version, however...it seemed to be somehow hardware dependent, but was reported to go away when Firefox was re-built and installed. At any rate, the results were slightly better than with Knoppmyth, since at least some programs were able to use the DNS.

Any ideas for what to research to get this working would be appreciated.

Open /etc/resolv.conf and add:
nameserver 192.168.1.1
nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is a nameserver ip address from your isp.

After making any changes, type
/etc/init.d/networking restart
to reload your network settings so that your changes will take effect.

The above example assumes your router's IP address is 192.168.1.1.

Took a look there...it already has the correct entries, it lists my local gateway (which is 192.168.0.1), plus the sole nameserver that I'm aware of for my ISP, the same one that my Windows computers find.

It seems to be a little more complicated than I described it as being above...it is apparently very similar to the problem I had with Ubuntu: some URLs will work just fine, for example nonus.debian.org successfully forwards me to www.debian.org/distrib/packages, and loads just fine in both Lynx and Firefox, but www.debian-multimedia.org (which loads much faster than debian.org on my Windows computers) won't, and packages can't be downloaded from its pools, either.

I'm starting to wonder if it isn't some kind of problem with recent kernels, since it's happening in multiple different distributions...though others seem to have gotten this motherboard working well for them, and the only thing I've added to the board is the processor (an Athlon 64 X2 dual-core 4200+ @ 65W) and RAM, unless you count the two SATA HDs and the DVD-RW, or the wireless mouse/keyboard and IR Streamzap remote. (I haven't got a tuner card in it, since I'm hoping to use an HDHomerun for that...the tuners will be connected over the network, so it makes sense to try and get the network working properly first).