Re: eth0 (Realtek 8139) suddenly not working

[Bill Smith <bill@rakupottery.org.uk>]

steef wrote:
> Peter Thomassen wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm still introducing a friend of mine to Linux by phone.
> >
> > Yesterday and the days before, his Realtek 8139 NCI worked out of the box
> > using DHCP. Today, no IP is received over DHCP; instead, the boot script
> > does several tries after different intervals and finally gives up.
> >
> > I googled around and found a hint that the Firewire interface can occupy
> > eth0, and indeed, eth1 was present (which I assumed to be the NIC), but
> > replacing eth0 by eth1 in /etc/network/interfaces didn't work. Also 
> > undoing
> > that change, blacklisting eth1394 in /etc/modules.d/blacklist and 
> > rebooting
> > didn't solve it.
> >
> > After the reboot, I noticed that 8139too wasn't loaded, so we 
> > modprobe'd it;
> > then ifdown eth0, ifup eth0. No success.
> >
> > Maybe it's useful to know that dmesg says that eth0 is a Realtek 8139. I
> > don't know what to do -- do you?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Peter
> >
> >
> >   
> maybe a stupid remark, but could this be a hardware-fault of the realtek 
> ethernetcard? i remember that in my machines two gave up for unclear 
> reasons.

Could well be the problem, I too have had realteks just stop working,
worth replacing the card, preferably with a 3com or intel based one.

--
Bill