Thanks to everyone for help on this...I am getting closer, but still no ping to my other local machine. It's no longer giving me the "ping: sendto: Operation not permitted" error when I try to ping...it's lust looking for my other local machine and not finding it.
Here's what I've got so far, perhaps you can tell me what other clues to look for. At boot-time, everything looks good. here are the messages regarding the NICs: Sep 30 19:17:35 jacktasty kernel: eth0: 3Com 3c905B Cyclone 100baseTx at 0x1400, 00:10:5a:07:29:54, IRQ 10 Sep 30 19:17:35 jacktasty kernel: eth1: 3Com 3cSOHO100-TX Hurricane at 0x1480, 00:50:04:6d:36:ef, IRQ 9 Sep 30 19:17:35 jacktasty kernel: eth0: Initial media type Autonegotiate. Sep 30 19:17:35 jacktasty kernel: eth0: MII #24 status 786d, link partner capability 40a1, setting half-duplex. Sep 30 19:20:14 jacktasty kernel: eth1: Initial media type Autonegotiate. Sep 30 19:20:14 jacktasty kernel: eth1: MII #24 status 7849, link partner capability 0000, setting half-duplex. ifconfig still isn't showing me second NIC after boot, I'm having to add that line manually (what do I edit so that ifconfig reflects the second NIC at boot-time?). But once added, here's what 'ifconfig' returns: eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:10:5A:07:29:54 inet addr:64.81.141.110 Bcast:64.81.141.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:324 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:330 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:4 txqueuelen:100 Interrupt:10 Base address:0x1400 eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:04:6D:36:EF inet addr:192.168.0.1 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:184 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:184 collisions:0 txqueuelen:100 Interrupt:9 Base address:0x1480 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:3924 Metric:1 RX packets:155 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:155 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 Just for kicks, here's what 'route' returns... Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface localnet * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 192.168.0.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth1 default gw-081-141.chi1 0.0.0.0 and 'route -n' returns... Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 64.81.141.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth1 0.0.0.0 64.81.141.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 Any help/suggestions appreciated! cheers, rory