eth0 problem

[Mohammed Shahidul Islam]

Sir,
I am using a RHEL AS 3, NIC card intel Gigabyte.During install OS did not get NIC. no message on 'dmesg' command and no device eth0 message on 'ifconfig eth0' command. if i do 'network service restart' it shows like: 3c501 device eth0 does not seem to be present,delaying initialization.

please help me . guide me step by step command.

Thanks
Shahid

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

I suggest you to upgrade to the latest RHEL3 update level. It should fix your problem.

[Matti_Kurkela · Accepted solution]

3c501??? This is not a driver for any Intel NIC: it's for a *very very old* 3Com NIC, one of the first Ethernet NIC models ever manufactured.

Please run "cat /etc/modules.conf" and copy the result here. There should be a line like "alias eth0 ". It is used to select the driver module for the network interface.

If is 3c501, you'll need to change that to the correct value (if it's an Intel NIC, I guess maybe "e100" or "eepro100"?) and run "depmod -a" to make the changes effective. After that, "network service restart" should work.

If you don't know the name of the correct driver module, please run "lspci" and show us the output, so we can figure out the correct driver module.

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

you're right, it should be e1000 module.

[Mohammed Shahidul Islam]

sir

o/p result is here

#cat /etc/modules.conf
Alias eth0 3c501
#lspci
00:19.0 Ethernet Controller: IntelCorporation: Unknow device 104a(rev 02)
#depmod -a
#

Please help me. How to i install driver ?
Regards

shahid

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

What is your RHEL3 update level? ("uname -r" and "cat /etc/redhat-release" output)
If it's not update 8, I suggest to upgrade.

As for NIC driver - you can try add

modprobe e1000

but I guess that it won't work...

[Matti_Kurkela]

The driver may be already available. It's just that the configuration file /etc/modules.conf insists to use the wrong driver.

To confirm that the "e1000" module is available, run:
modinfo e1000

If it responds:
modinfo: e1000: no module by that name found

then the e1000 module is not available. The easiest way to fix this might be to re-install with a newer Update level of RHEL AS 3 (i.e. RHEL AS 3 Update 8). The CD images are available from https://rhn.redhat.com - you'll need to register to Red Hat Network to access it.

If it responds with several lines, starting with something like this:
filename: /lib/modules/2.4.18-18.7.xsmp/kernel/drivers/net/e1000/e1000.o
description: "Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver"
author: "Intel Corporation, "
license: "Dual BSD/GPL"
[...]

then the e1000 module is available and you'll only need to change /etc/modules.conf to say "e1000" instead of "3c501". There are many ways to do that... here's one:

First, backup the /etc/modules.conf file:
cp /etc/modules.conf /etc/modules.conf.backup

Edit the modules.conf file:
vi /etc/modules.conf





Verify the file is OK:
cat /etc/modules.conf
(If something went wrong, "mv /etc/modules.conf.backup /etc/modules.conf" to undo your changes.)

Make the change effective immediately, so you don't need to reboot:
depmod -a

Make sure the wrong module is not loaded:
rmmod 3c501
(this might respond with "rmmod: module 3c501 is not loaded". That's OK.)

Restart networking:
service network restart