Ext. hard drives

[dehuszar]

I'm starting a new thread for a new problem that seems to have blossomed forth from this previous problem: http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=108267

But I'll explain the problem anew. On two machines I have Maxtor Ext USB hard drives. On one machine I tried to fix the permissions on the drive and mysteriously my machine's internet connection was hosed. I couldn't figure it out and just mondo restored to a working image. Initially I thought it had to do with my trying to install Morrowind using Wine, but I did the two around the same time and figured something Windows-based was more likely to kill everything. :)

Anyway, I was testing the Maxtor (a different drive, same model) at work as it refused to be recognized on the main server after some permissions fiddling. So to make sure the drive wasn't broken I moved it over to the mail server (these are the only linux boxes in the office or I'd have tested a box of more lowly purpose), got it to work, unmounted the drive and halted the system. Then I unplugged the drive and booted. Upon boot it gives me this message saying that the configuration has changed and would I like to run the appropriate tool? Now obviously the drive wasn't listed as it wasn't there. So I cancelled out and continued the boot.

No internet, and my samba shares are hosed. Other internet machines have internet and can ping each other. This machine can't. This machine runs the printer to our internet workstations which now cannot print.

What have I done? What can cause the ethernet card to zonk out like that? Obviously it has something to do with reconfiguring Linux's perception of what hardware is available, but I'm still a little green and haven't the first f@#(#$& clue as to where to start looking.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,
Sam

[DerekKraan]

Network cards are set up when you load the proper module(kernel module)(driver) for your particular card.

In a terminal as root run the following command: lsmod

If you know what the card is called you can tell me here and I'll look up the proper module for you. Then you can use modprobe to load the module with the following command: modprobe modulename(whatever the module's name is)

Oh right, also make sure that your permissions on eth0 are set to something world readable(777 will do, I'm not too acquanted with the octal number system and how it relates to permissions)

[mdwatts]

Check /etc/fstab to see if there is a enty for the external drive, have a look through your system logfiles in /var/log to see if you can spot where the problem is and then check to see if eth0 is active and all the required modules are loaded.

ifconfig

lsmod