Mandrake 7.2 & HP EN1207D-TX PCI 10/100 Fast Ethernet Adapter

[Scott J. Showalter]

I am new to LINUX, although am an experienced HP-UX Sys Admin. I am haveing trouble getting LINUX to recognize my NIC automatically. I can get it to work manually. I have a Pavilion 8550C.

I have read as much as I can find about the problems others have had with this NIC and LINUX. So I know to use the "RealTek RTL8139" kernal module. I have also changed the O/S to "other" in the BIOS.

The way that I have been able to get it to work is to go into HardDrake, select "Network Device Cards", select "Accton Technology Corporation SMC2-1211TX", then click on the "Run Configuration Tool" button. I then select "Realteck Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139", and click on "OK". Next, I run "Linuxconf", select "Networking", select "Host name and IP network devices", select "Adapter 1". I select rtl8139 as the Kernel module. After applying this, I finally get the following in dmesg:

rtl8139.c:v1.07 5/6/99 Donald Becker http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/rtl8139.html
eth0: SMC1211TX EZCard 10/100 (RealTek RTL8139) at 0x2000, IRQ 9, 00:10:b5:07:ff:da.

The next time I boot to LINUX, I have to go through the same procedure again. Any ideas how I can make this configuration change permanent would be appreciated.

[Adrian Snyman]

Well, in the Directory /etc:

There should be a file either
conf.modules or modules.conf ..

In this file, near the top, add the line:

alias eth0 rtl8139

In the Directory:
/etc/sysconfig
edit the file:
network

Make sure that the following is set:

NETWORKING=yes
FORWARD_IPV4=false
HOSTNAME=(hostname)
DOMAINNAME=(domain)


Then, in the Directory:
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts

edit the file:

ifcfg-eth0

In this file put the following:

DEVICE=eth0
IPADDR=(ip-addr)
NETMASK=(netmask)
NETWORK=(net-address)
BROADCAST=(broadcast)
ONBOOT=yes




Hope all this helps ..

[Scott J. Showalter]

Thanks for your suggestions. All of the files you mentioned had the lines you quoted in them. I made backup copies of these files, then edited out some of the non-applicable lines.

I still have the same result. The /var/log/messages shows:

Feb 20 19:10:57 pavilion insmod: Note: /etc/modules.conf is more recent than /lib/modules/2.2.17-21mdk/modules.dep
Feb 20 19:10:57 pavilion insmod: /lib/modules/2.2.17-21mdk/net/rtl8139.o: invalid parameter parm_irq
Feb 20 19:10:57 pavilion insmod: /lib/modules/2.2.17-21mdk/net/rtl8139.o: insmod eth0 failed
Feb 20 19:10:57 pavilion ifup: Delaying eth0 initialization.
Feb 20 19:10:57 pavilion network: Bringing up device eth0: failed

This time, after running harddrake, I issued: /etc/rc.d/init.d/network start

Then /var/log/messages showed:

Feb 20 19:21:23 pavilion network: Setting network parameters: succeeded
Feb 20 19:21:24 pavilion network: Bringing up interface lo: succeeded
Feb 20 19:21:24 pavilion network: Bringing up interface eth0: succeeded

Still not sure why it is failing at boot time...