IPConfig (Password?) networking problems

I am currently several thousand miles away from home trying to help my wife with a networking problem. The PowerPC desktop has quit connecting to the internet.

My understanding from her when I had her look at the network settings for the Ethernet card is there is some message on the network settings similar to "The internal ethernet card has a manual address and may not be able to access the internet."

I tried having her type in "ipconfig set EN0 DHCP" into the terminal however it kicked back a permissions error. Should it be followed by the admin password?

If I have her remove my administrator password, would it expect one?

I read it requires "Root permissions" but quite honestly have no idea what that refers too.

Thanks,

There is a drop down that will let her select DHCP. It's right there in the network settings.

There is no need to use the terminal. However the command you supplied should be preceded with a "sudo". Which will ask for a password. As long as the currently logged in user is an admin user, just supply that users password. If the password is blank, just hit return.

Thanks for the reply.

Your correct, that is there and one of the first things I had her do was check that and change it from DHCP to Manual and back again hoping that would trigger it to go get a new IP address.

The thing that is making me think it needs to be done in terminal is the sentence above the dropdown area that reads something to the effect of "internal ethernet card has manual ip assigned and may not be able to connect to the internet". While I do not remember specifically setting a manual address it is not out of the question.

I will have her try removing my password and then re-typing the ipconfig command when I talk with her next.

Thanks again.