very semi newbie. i have a little experience with linux/suse. i have been using samba/suse for a lil but never had much of a problem that i couldnt find online. basically the run down.
-installed fresh suse on new pc
-the onboard nic worked just fine after setup (configured static
-setup samba (working just fine)
-connected/installed new card (pci) linksys gb (dont know the model/not at the location)
----that card is recognized correctly under hardware infomation and i am able to configure it in network settings but i am unable to do any network tasks with it(ping, access web)
-----set it up dhcp and static. either way it doesnt see anything

--so i tried with another card (smart??something)
--set it up the same way. tried static and dhcp. same issue. unable to ping or access web.

the onboard card works just fine. even after installing and configuring.

what i configured
--ip address, dns, gateway, and firewall.

i followed this link
http://opensuse.swerdna.org/susenic.html
to failure.

no errors. there is something i am missing on setting the second card up. i am only wanting to have the gb card working properly. nice for the onboard as a backup but primarily the gb card.

You can't simply configure two NIC cards on the same subnet and expect them to work. On the host side of things, the route for the onboard nic probably has precedence. You could bond the two interfaces together, so if one interface goes bad, the connection will still operate on the other. The switch needs to support bonded interfaces however. If this is the case, then you configure the IP address, route, and default gateway for the bonded interface rather than the individual interfaces.

I'd suggest first using the gigabit interface alone, disabling the onboard nic while you do the research into bonding and determining if the switch supports pruning duplicate routes and interfaces.

The larc manual http://lartc.org/ would be required reading. There was a recent Linux Journal article on bonding interfaces for redundancy: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10931

thank you for the quick and accurate response. that made complete sense after reading it. i disabled the onboard in bios and kept the gigabit card in. perfect. i am completely interested in the bonding. thanks for the info