Pavilion 8500 and 3c905 eth0 card

[Vernon Brown]

I'm setting up RedHat 6.1 on my HP Pavilion 8500 and finally got it on the Internet by replacing its Winmodem with a Linux compatible one. The remaining problem is that on boot up I get an error message of FAILED when after the "Bringing up eth0" message. The card is a 3Com 3c905 the twin of one in my server which is an old Packard Bell 133 mhz also running RH 6.1.

I've read the previous messages and was able to get most stuff working by changing the setup options from "Windows 98/NT" to "Other" and the "File System" from "DOS" to "Other" as suggested in the past posts.

Has anyone experienced this and found the answer ??

[Albert E. Whale, CISSP · Accepted solution]

If this is an out of the box installation the problem could be that there is no definiton for the ETHERNET controller.

Try putting the following in the /etc/conf.modules file:

alias eth0 3c59x

I have a 3Com 3c905B Cyclone card and this is what it places in the conf.mmodules to load at boot time.

Later, you can compile your own kernel to include support for whatever you need built into the kernel.

Hope that helps!

[Vernon Brown]

Thanks Albert !!

That cleared the problem. For others who may have a problem getting their Redhat 6.1 connected here's a rundown of what I did.

1. On bootup when the HP screen comes up push the F1 key to get into setup mode.

2. Push the Right Arrow key to move to the "Advanced" setup area.

3. Use the Arrow keys to highlight the Operating System option.

4. Push "Enter" to bring up the options list.

5. From the options list use the Arrow keys to select "Other" and push Enter.

6. Just below that use the same proceedure to change the "File System Type" from "DOS" to "Other"

7. Use the arrow keys to select "Exit" at the top of the setup screen and push Enter. Then in the popup box that asks whether you want to save the changes select "Yes" and push Enter.

8. After bootup into Linux log in as Root and use a Linux editor to open the /etc/conf.modules file. If the following entry is not in the conf.modules file use your editor to put it in then save the conf.modules file:

alias eth0 3c59x

Note: If you're using a card other than the 3Com509 ethernet card you will need to alias eth0 to the driver for that card.

In most cases the alias will be done for you by the install and you won't need to do anything except change the Windows setup portion above.