Hi all,

I have completed a search and reading of various threads regarding eth0 issues and, while I may have figured out where the problem lies, I have no idea how I can go about fixing it. Here's the situation:

I used to have FC2 installed. After updating to the 2.6.8 kernal (I believe it was), FC2 failed to boot and hung up at "bringing up interface eth0". After a bit of troubleshooting, I decided it might be worthwhile to start from scratch with FC3, so I reformatted my Linux partitions and installed FC3 without a problem. However, the issue with hanging at "bringing up interface eth0" remains. With FC2, even after the problem started, I could go back to earlier kernals and boot (and access the net) without a problem, but, of course, with FC3 newly installed (kernal 2.6.9-1.667), there are no earlier kernals to boot. I have tried booting to the rescue CD and running netconfig manually, but after telling it to use DHCP, the program responds with "kernal panic-not syncing-Halting" and crashes.

After some reading, I think the problem may be due to the Firewire port on my SB Audigy 2 ZS, rather than my "ethernet card" in particular. The reason I mention this is that I notice the ohcil1394 'loaded' (proper term?) shortly before the system hangs (and this is mentioned here). The problem, as usual, is that the specifics about fixing it aren't a nice step-by-step procedure that a new user to Linux/FC3 can use. I was thinking about simply removing my sound card and then booting into FC3 to see if that bypasses the problem, but the fact that it worked with earlier kernals seems to suggest the problem lies in the way the kernal is configured.

Any help with this would be very much appreciated. Keep in mind that if you ask for file contents to be posted and the like, it would be good to give some brief steps on how to go about getting the contents in the first place. Thanks!

How about if you ask the kernel not to load ethernet while booting? At some point in the booting process, the kernel should ask you if you want to go into an Interactive mode (press I). Do that, and when it comes to eth0, say no. After you log in as root, use Network Device Control in Gnome to turn off the option for starting up eth0 at boot-up. You can always start up eth0 manually when you want to go online.

Thanks, I'll try the interactive mode again, although I've had difficulties getting into it earlier (it wouldn't recognize that I pressed 'i'). Setting up manually inside FC3 should work, just didn't know how to get into it to do so.

Does anyone know why it's doing this now, with the latest kernals when it didn't do it before? I'd be interested to know what, if anything, changed (I hate not understanding things).

Just an update: I've obviously been pressing 'i' at the wrong time (when the message tells me to do it). I've since started pressing it repeatedly through the text-based loading into the graphical phase and I've finally been able to enter interactive mode. Bypassing the network detection there allows me to get into FC3 and I'll set up my network manually from there. Hopefully that'll all work out okay.

Thanks for the tip. It's been bothering me for a while, but I never got around to correcting it.

Continuing update: I've tried going into the network configuration within FC3, but as soon as I activate a new connection, the system freezes. Only a hard boot can get me out of it.

I tried a couple of different things. One was to simply edit the network settings that were already present to reflect my proper ip, network mask, default gateway, and DNS server name. Another was to delete the network connection there and manually set up a brand new one, both with manual settings (didn't work), or automatically configure (didn't work). Each time the system froze on activating the network, whether I activated it within the Network configuration program or whether I activated the NetworkManager service.

One thing I noticed was that my Ethernet card, which in WinXP is listed as CNet PRO200WL PCI Fast Ethernet, is thought to be a Davicom Semiconducter 21x4x DEC-Tulip compatible 10/100 Ethernet. I don't know if that's an issue here or not, but there is no CNet PRO200WL in the drop down list of cards to choose from, so I didn't bother changing it (it'd just be random guessing down the list anyway). Could this be a problem? That is, is the card using the wrong driver and that's why it's not working? The only strange thing is that it worked with the older kernals but not the newer, and I don't know why the network driver would be different between them.

Ah well, at least I can get into FC3, but without a network, it's pretty useless. If anyone has any futher advice, I'd very much appreciate it.