Router configuration with Linux

Most routers must be configured before usage. Unfortunately the manual describes the procedures only for Windows and sometimes for Mac OS. The configuration is often don through a web front end of the router. Often these are easily reached. Some products however are protected more strongly (Wireless router and access points). Here the access is only allowed from one IP address, which is not likely to be distributed by the DHCP. Therefore the IP of the network interface has to be changed to be able to connect to the web front end.
This command does the trick (changes the IP to 192.168.0.3):

ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.3 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

Network with Linux not working

Half a year ago I bought a Notebook (Lenovo 3000 N500). It came with Windows Vista pre-installed. With Windows everything seemed to work. I could hook the notebook to the network and thereby access the internet. Since Windows is just not ‚it‘ I installed Ubuntu. There only the wireless networking worked. Serious web research did not offer any solutions. Therefore I describe it here:
If you issue the ifconfig command you will only get the lo loopback interface and if enabled the wlan0 interface. The device eth0 is available under /dev. If you issue ifconfig eth0 the interface information is displayed, though no IP is assigned. If you try to bring it up through ifconfig up eth0 you will receive the error No such device even though we verified the existence of the device.
It seems to me like a hardware problem which windows is better suited to handle. I get the impression that Windows™ is expected to handle faulty harware or hardware configuration.
The solution to hook the notebook up with the network with Linux was to buy an external USB adapter for the network. I choose the D-Link DUB-E100 since it is verified to work with Linux (Kernel version 2.4.22).

Linux from Scratch – Network

This time around the compilation and installation of the LFS procieded almost without a scratch. Perhaps that is because I used this time the stable description.
I had a problem with the network configuration. The system is on a network with DHCP so I thought I could skip the whole network configuration. Doesn’t work. That mistake I realised when wanted to ping the router. So back to the configuration. In the udev rules I decided to work with the bus. But it didn’t work out as I thought. After checking (with lspci) I figured I used the wrong ID.
But the network interface just wouldn’t work. So the problem must lie within the kernel or its lack of support for the correct networking device. Recompiled, rebooted and reconected.
It works.