Re: Linux installs but does not "see" NIC

[Shyamal Prasad <shyamal.prasad@sbcglobal.net>]

    "John" == John Foster <jfoster@augustmail.com> writes:

    John> continued on & finished the install & rebooted. I saw that
    John> the kernel found & identified my NIC identifying it properly
    John> as a Realtek 8139 based card.  It did NOT load the module(
    John> uses the 8139too) so I used insmod & loaded it. the kernel
    John> acknowledged this but still no connection to the net.

John,

A couple of things to look into:

- If it does not load the module, how come it identifies the card?
Could you tell us what the specific message is?

- What does ifconfig show when you say "no connection to net"?

- What does your eth0 line in /etc/networks/interfaces look like?

- Any difference if you 'ifdown eth0' and then 'ifup eth0' again?

- Do you have af_packet in /etc/modules listed? Some DHCP clients need
the packet and net filters.

Finally, what 2.4 kernel are you using? If it is bf2.4 you should have
the 8139 drivers built in. I see in the kernel config:

CONFIG_8139CP=y
CONFIG_8139TOO=y
CONFIG_8139TOO_8129=y

and also:

CONFIG_PACKET=y
CONFIG_NETFILTER=y
CONFIG_FILTER=y

So, to have better control over some of this I would suggest not using
bf2.4 but apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.18-{arch} instead. 

Cheers!
Shyamal