VIA Rhine (NIC) as module okay, but compiled into 2.4.24 no good?

[Roger Chrisman <rogerhc@pacbell.net>]

Hi,

On a server on my LAN, I had Woody and then Testing (installed from CD#1 + 
Net) connecting fine to my LAN (DHCP) with the bf24 (kernel 2.4.18) from the 
Woody CD with VIA Rhine, my NIC's driver, added as kernel module.

But when I compiled my own kernel 2.4.24 (from the .deb kernel source) and 
compiled VIA Rhine, my NICs driver, into the kernel instead of adding it as 
module, and boot into the new kernel, the network is down and I can't seem to 
get it to come up.

# ifup eth0
return no error message.

# ping r 
(r is my desktop box and is entered in this server's /etc/hosts)
Network is unreachable

# ifdown eth0
cat: /var/run/dhclient.eth0.pid: No such file or directory

Is there a way I can verify that VIA Rhine NIC driver is compiled into my 
kernel?

(I looked in the .config that I used to compile the kernel and it *is* listed 
there as the first of two VIA Rhine options. The second VIA Rhine option is 
for sound or something and I did not chose it.)

Any idea what I have missed?

Thanks,

Roger