installing network card?

[seeker22]

Hi, Ok.. I am trying to install a new network card (Realtek RTL-8029(AS)
In mandrake 8 and when my machine starts Kudzu will come up and ask me to configure
it and so I press configure... It says configuing card and then the screen will just go blank and thats it. so now I just pressed ignore cause it just freezes.
So how would I go about installing it manualy? i've tried looking through all my how-tos and doc's couldn't find out how to do it.. Hardrake will see the card and everything i've ran the configuration tool for it but I can't get eth0 to start at boot time. could anyone help me? Thanks!

[DMR]

Basic NIC troubleshooting 101:

1. Check the screen output at bootup. If the NIC is being properly initialized, you should see a line that says: "Bringing up eth0- O.K." If you see "failed" or "delaying" instead, you've got problems (see #3).

2. Assuming the NIC comes up, you can do the configuration with the graphical configuration tools (linuxconf, netconf, HardDrake). Click on Basic host information->Adaptor 1. From there, select eth0 as the device, choose the correct module (ne2k, I think) from the drop-down list of kernel modules, and enable the device. Then either choose DHCP (if you're using it), or enter your IP information manually. After that, fill in your DNS and gateway/routing info under the appropriate sections.

3. If you get a failure on bootup, you may have a resource conflict with another device. Try turning off Plug-N-Play support in your BIOS, it can cause conflicts with some cards.

4. Log in as root, go to the command line or terminal window, and type "cat /proc/pci" and verify that your NIC is being recognized. Type "cat /proc/interrupts" and make sure your NIC's IRQ isn't conflicting with another device. Type "cat /proc/ioports" and check the address ranges for conflicts. If you have resource conflicts, you can try rearranging the slot order of your PCI cards.

5. You can also verify the IRQ/address info by typing "ifconfig". There should be stats for the loopback device (lo) and eth0.

6. If you get the card recognized, but the module isn't loading, try to load it manually by typing "insmod <your module's name>". After that, type "lsmod" to list all loaded modules; your module should show up there.

7. You can then manually configure the NIC by typing "ifconfig eth0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx up", where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is your IP address.

8. Last, type "alias eth0 <your module's name>".

Those are the most basic steps; there's more to it if need to set up the rest of your network information by hand. Try these first, and if you still have issues, repost with specifics on the problems.

[ 16 July 2001: Message edited by: DMR ]

[seeker22]

Hi, Thanks.. yes Harddrake knows the card is there but when I boot up eth0 doesn't come up at all in the boot to say failed or ok. I will try some of the commands you have gave me but which one would make eth0 startup on boot?

[seeker22]

Grr, Ok I did everything you said and I could not see any conflicts of any kind and yes the module is nc2k-pci and I have double made sure that was the correct one in some docs and I had it set to IRQ11 for Eth0 which is not in use and that should have worked. And when I reboot if Fails with a big long error. So I tried it in Drakconf and this is the error it gave me.

insmod'ing module ne2k-pci failed at /usr/lib/libDrakX/modules.pm line 510.

It says sort of the same thing at boot it goes by to fast to copy it but something about the insmoding

[ 17 July 2001: Message edited by: seeker22 ]

[seeker22]

Oh yes and also the NIC is not really hooked up to a network no cable is attached to it. but it still shouldn't cause all this I don't think just to let you know

[bdg1983]

Try 'modprobe ne' and see what happens. I searched at Google for Realtek RTL-8029 and didn't find that many in English, but one mentioned using 'ne'. You never know.

[DMR]

Hmm, I'm away from my Linux box right now, so I can't check out the error. Right after logging in, type "dmsg" to review the messages that scrolled by at bootup. You might want to pipe dmsg to the "more" or "less" command to view it screen by screen.

[seeker22]

The "ne" are for the ISA cards my model is in my linux docs and it says to use the ne2k-pci.. But I have tried to use the ne anyway but it also doesn't work. Ok I will try to find the boot message and show you. I looked in the boot log but it just says failed it doesn't give the message

[seeker22]

Ok here is the error I am getting from modprobe and its the same error I get at bootup

/sbin/modprobe ne2k-pci
/lib/modules/2.4.3-20mdk/kernel/drivers/net/ne2k-pci.o.gz: invalid parameter parm_irq
/lib/modules/2.4.3-20mdk/kernel/drivers/net/ne2k-pci.o.gz: insmod /lib/modules/2.4.3-20mdk/kernel/drivers/net/ne2k-pci.o.gz failed
/lib/modules/2.4.3-20mdk/kernel/drivers/net/ne2k-pci.o.gz:insmod ne2k-pci failed

[bdg1983]

As suggested by DMR, did you disable PnP OS in the bios?

Did you try

insmod ne2k-pci irq=## io=0x###

I'm not sure of the correct syntax, but I know examples have been posted in the forums or in the NHF's. My memory is not what it used to be.