Re: Network Cards
Matthew Sackman wrote:
>--snip--<
> It's a module. The natsemi module. It loads fine without there being
> anything relating to eth0 anywhere under /etc/modutils.
>
> Weird - I simply never knew this should be there. In fact, come to
> think of it, on all the boxes I've set up I've never put eth0 in there
> and I've never had a problem.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Matthew
I have been following this thread with a modest amount of interest, and
it spurred me to do some investigation. Here is what I have found
so-far:
I have two computers running Debian "testing". One has a checkered
past, starting off with Stormix, upgraded to Progeny, then upgraded to
its current "testing" status using the apt-get dist-upgrade route. In
poking around the /etc/init.d/ directory, I ran across a program called
"discover", that even has a MAN page! It is an interesting little
program that is designed to do some automatic hardware detection at
bootup! It even shows up as a separate package in the Debian "testing"
and "unstable" archives, but is not in the "stable" archives.
The second computer is one that I have just installed a fresh copy of
Debian "testing" upon using the new boot-floppies (the idepci variety),
and it DOESN'T have this "discover" package installed. Evidently, this
is not a part of the standard install!
Now here comes the interesting part. On the "fresh" install, I had to
use the alias trick to get my NIC to install properly...actually I used
the modconf program. On the other (upgraded) computer I never had to
add anything, BUT I cannot say when this particular package was
introduced. I do have a third computer running Progeny Newton, and it
is on there. I strongly suspect it was introduced to my "upgraded"
system when I had Progeny on it.
The bottom-line conclusion for me is that the "discover" package is
probably doing some automatic hardware detection and setup for those who
have NOT had to use the alias "trick" to get their cards working! I
would appreciate some verification of this conclusion from others.
Check out the "discover" package...it looks interesting, and I haven't
heard much ballyhoo about it. This is the first time I have ever
noticed its presence on my system(s).
Cheers,
-Don Spoon-
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