Ethernet Activation not working

[WildFish]

First of all, I know this has been addressed before, so I'll apologize now for bringing it back up! I recently installed RH9 (never used Linux before) and everything seems hunky dorey except for this one thing:

I have a Realtek NIC using the 8139too driver that RH recognizes, but can't activate.

I'll try to give you as much info as possible here, based on some of the other discussions I've seen:

I'm running off a Intel 1.6Ghz

During boot-up, the process hangs for about a minute as it tries the connection. The message I get is "failed to determin IP...check cable?"

I have disabled PnP in bios and reset my cable modem & router (and I've tried bypassing the router). I have also tried different cables that I know work on other systems.

I've verified that the module is loading using '/sbin/lspci -vv'
I also know it has a working driver from looking up '/proc/ioports'

(note: I've also hooked up a Linksys NC100 as eth1, which I've verified using the above method and still no luck. the activity lights are blinking away so I'm just about positive the problem isn't outside the system)

I'm going to continue perusing the files here to see if the answer if buried somewhere, but in the meantime I'd greatly appreciate some input. Thanks so much!

[yongbeng]

RTL8139 would definetly work in Linux. It's one of the more generic network card around. are you using DHCP or manual configured IP? maybe you can check it up on your log file.
/var/log

[JusKickNit]

I had this same problem when not setting up eth0 during install.
Its not the card. It's either your IP addresses,gateway,or DNS.

[je_fro]

/sbin/ifconfig

[sharth]

just for the sake of things, try a new cable, and try pump -i eth0

[WildFish]

Thank you all for your comments & input. Unfortunately, my system is now experiencing some rather more grievous problems so the ethernet card is the least of my worries. It's hardware-related, which could be the source of my activation troubles, but I'll probably never know...
Thanks again!

[je_fro]

What happened?

[WildFish]

Well, since you asked, I no longer have the OS up and running. While attempting a fresh install last night I ran into a fatal error while copying files and haven't been able to complete the install. After swapping out the hard drive didn't work, I ran a media check on my original install disc, which came up bad. A newly burned disc also came up bad. Reading from a different drive came up bad.
I decided to put Linux on this system after it crashed and burned from Windows a few weeks back, but I'm thinking that meltdown had some more serious results than I thought. If you can think of some magic wand I might wave to make this go away, I'd love to hear it - otherwise I'm bracing for the worst...
Thanks again!

[je_fro]

Turned out to be a bad stick of RAM. I fiddled with replacing one or the other until it was right.

[WildFish]

je_fro, I could kiss you! Or at least give you a big hug. Maybe a handshake...

I switch out my RAM and that solved the problem. I was able to do a fresh install of RH9. Which of course leads me back to square one: ethernet trouble.

To answer your earlier question, this is what's returned by ifconfig:

Eth0
link encap:Ethernet Hwaddr 00:07:95:0C:FA:0D
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:6685 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:11 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:404840 (395.3 Kb) TX bytes:3762 (3.6 Kb)
Interrupt: 12 Base addres:0xa000

lo
Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255:0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:1685 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1685 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:114560 (111.8 Kb) TX bytes:114560 (111.8 Kb)
Interrupt: 12 Base addres:0xa000

at least that's my transcription of it, but i'm pretty sure it's accurate.

[je_fro]

DHCP?
RH9 should've detected all that.
It looks like no IP is assigned, how do you get one?
192.168.1.?
or DHCP?

[WildFish]

Supposedly I'm getting an IP through DHCP. I have two other computers linked to the same router, both using DHCP without a problem. Should I try getting an IP address from those systems and assigning it manually on Linux?

[je_fro]

try:
/etc/init.d/networking restart

I can't remember where the files are you can edit by hand, but there are GUI tools you can use to get an ip assigned by DHCP. Try:
neat

[sharth]

what does /etc/network/interfaces say, and im pretty sure that file doens't exist on red hat.

so try a cd /etc && grep "iface" * and let us know what is in those files.

[WildFish]

You'll be happy to know that I was able to finally activate my ethernet card...at the expense of my other computers' connections.

Maybe I just have a funky cable modem. In the past I have tried hooking the modem directly to the computer, which didn't work. For a lark, I tried going back through the router, but disconnected the other connection. After resetting the modem, lo and behold, the card activated during the boot process.

For some strange reason, though, I cannot get all three computers to connect at once. My set up is this: Cable modem to Kingston Hub - from there, one cable to Linux and another cable into the next room, into a SpeedStream mini-router (sorry if I sound ignorant with names, it's cause I am) and from the Speedstream to Win XP and Mac OSX ethernet ports.

I'm going to try loosing the speedstream and see what happens.

[lrhogusa]

Just to let you know the RH9 files are at /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts and they are called:
eth0 = ifcfg-eth0
eth1 = ifcfg-eth1
These files are read at bootup and don't get updated if you try something like this:
ifconfig eth0 down
ifconfig 10.45.30.10
ifconfig eth0 up
This procedure is good until next reboot so using "neat" is better. I learned that the hard way.