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Re: [SOLVED] detect ethernet card?



On Sat, 11 Sep 2010 15:28:44 -0400 (EDT), Atu wrote:
> On Friday 10 September 2010 11:54:57 pm Stephen Powell wrote:
>> As a general rule, kernel modules which function as a device driver
>> for a piece of hardware do not need to be listed (and should not be
>> listed) in /etc/modules.
>> They will be loaded automatically by udev if the kernel module has
>> an alias which matches the id of the piece of hardware. 
> 
> Thanks for the info Steven.

That's Stephen, not Steven.  (Same pronunciation though.)

> I like this approach of not needing to
> know which driver module to use and instead let the kernel pick it.
> 
> I wonder why the original error message ("SIOCSIFADDR" and so on)
> had to be so cryptic though.

That's no fun!  Where's the mystery?  ;-)

Seriously, though,

   #ifup eth0
   [...]
   SIOCSIFADDR: No such device

Seems pretty plain to me.  No such device.  If you know you have
an ethernet adapter, and you're getting a message such as
"no such device", it should be fairly obvious that the device was
not recognized.

> Couldn't it just have said
> "No support for this ethernet chip (yet)"?

It loads drivers for cards that it recognizes.  It doesn't usually
issue any messages at all for devices it does not recognize.
But if it did issue any messages, it would be in bootup messages,
("dmesg|less") not messages issued during "ifup eth0".

> That would have made it easier to see that upgrading could help.

An old release cannot usually tell you that a newer release will
support your card.  That's because the old release doesn't know
if or when support will be added.

-- 
  .''`.     Stephen Powell    
 : :'  :
 `. `'`
   `-


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