topic Re: network device modules dont get loaded in Operating System - Linux

network device modules dont get loaded

iinfi1 — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:15:28 GMT

hi.
i v an issue with centos 5.4 64 bit installed on a AMD Athlon x4 620 6GB RAM.
it has a peculiar issue. i have 3 LAN cards in the system. at every boot only 1 of the 3 LAN cards get detected and the other two dont get loaded at all
the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 and /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth2 files get renamed /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1.bak and /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth2.bak
and the modules for the other two LAN cards dont get loaded at all.
lspci does show the other two adapters but i do not know how to find the modules of the other 2 cards.

is there any procedure to find the modules of the hardware installed in the system. in this case the entries of eth1 and eth2 are not present in the /etc/modules.conf file.
e.g the /etc/modules.conf file contains entries for
alias eth0 r8169

likewise how do I know which module is for eth1 and eth2?

thanks

Re: network device modules dont get loaded

Matti_Kurkela — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:26:40 GMT

/etc/modules.conf? Don't you mean /etc/modprobe.conf?

If the modules don't load automatically, that means hardware auto-detection is not working. In that case, it would be important to know the model of the NICs first.

Does "lspci" detect the missing NICs?

MK

Re: network device modules dont get loaded

iinfi1 — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:45:09 GMT

yes sorry ... modprobe.conf
lspci does show the missing LAN cards.
infact when I rename the ifcfg-eth1.bak and ifcfg-eth2.bak files to ifcfg-eth1 and ifcfg-eth2 and restart the system it starts working again.
secondly, before the above restart (i.e after renaming the eth1.bak and eth2.bak) if I do a ifup eth1 it takes the static IPADDR i assign, and even pings from the next system! but i cannot do anything else. i cannot ssh into or from it or do anything!!
when i restart all three LAN cards start work.

Re: network device modules dont get loaded

Tim Nelson — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:26:02 GMT

I beleive the Kudzu process is the only one that renames the ethernet config files.

a bug there might lead you to a solution.

Re: network device modules dont get loaded

Matti_Kurkela — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 01:17:02 GMT

So, as a work-around, disable Kudzu for now:

service kudzu stop
chkconfig kudzu off

If/when you change the hardware configuration (add/remove cards or something), you can then either restart Kudzu manually once (with "service kudzu start") and verify that it does the right thing, or make the necessary configuration changes manually.

MK

Re: network device modules dont get loaded

iinfi1 — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:02:46 GMT

thanks everyone...
i have now disabled kudzu and also tinkered a lot with the network config files. hopefully when i start the machine again tomorrow i will not face this issue. will let u know if things work fine

thanks again

Re: network device modules dont get loaded

iinfi1 — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:40:11 GMT

i m afraid the issue has cropped up again.
the ethernet which came with the board works fine and has its alias as eth0

the other two NICs are external and are visible in lspci
the hardware address changes to HWADDR=ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:bf
in the ifcfg-eth1 config file.
if i change it to the correct one i get an error saying

Bringing up interface eth1: Device eth1 has different MAC address than expected, ignoring.
[FAILED]

this is troubling me a lot and now i simply cannot enable it today.

what could be the issue?

Re: network device modules dont get loaded

iinfi1 — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:28:45 GMT

out of the three LAN cards (1 builtin and 2 PCI) in the system, i have removed one of them! still the issue persists. how can i control which device gets which LAN identity (i.e. eth1 eth2 etc)

is there any way i can tell the system that LAN card with MAC id xxxx sud get only eth1 and one with yyyy sud get eth2 only?
or i think in my case its a question of the system properly detecting the NICs itself. i dont know. i m confused!