Ethernet hardware not seen / installed

ritapas · 04-25-2007, 08:42 PM

Hello there,
I've always worked with proprietary unix systems so I'm quite a newbie with hardware compatibility issues.
I'm trying to make a linux router of an old compaq pc some friends of mine were going to dismiss: so I bought one more ethernet nic and went on installing.
I tried different distros of linux, of which none detected both nic, and I finally chose slackware because of its quite welcome lack of whistles and bells. You see, I'm not used to work with graphical interfaces!
Please note that while it was running windows 2000 I was able to use both nic, so I'm almost sure they work.
Here's the list of network hardware, as read on the boards themselves:
(D-LINK) DFE-538TX REVD2 chip: DL10038C
(no brand reported) TJ-2 94V-0.0517 chip: DAVICOM DM9102AF

The bios has little options and all I am able to do is changing the IRQ for one of them: currently it's reported as 5 but doesn/t show in /proc/irq/5 (should it?).

Of the two nicks, only the DAVICOM is reported in lspci and in dmesg.

I've been searching a lot and found that needed drivers should be rtl8139 and tulip, supported by most distros, anyway no network module was started so I also tried compiling a new kernel (2.6.20.7).
make mrproper
make menuconfig, checking y or m for all entries including tulip, davicom, realtek 8139
make
make modules (don't know if this step is still needed)
make modules_install
make install

New kernel boots but no module is loaded. I tried to enable the most likely ones (tulip, 8139cp and 8139too) in rc.modules but answer is FATAL: module ... not found.

Why weren't they compiled?

I don't know where to start.
Anyway, this is the output of dmesg|grep -i eth
eth0: Davicom DM9102/DM9102A rev 64 at Port 0x1000, 00:08:A1:8C:10:B9, IRQ 5.

And this is is from lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8501 [Apollo MVP4] (rev 04)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8501 [Apollo MVP4 AGP]
00:07.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South] (rev 21)
00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 10)
00:07.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 10)
00:07.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 10)
00:07.4 Bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] (rev 30)
00:09.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 536EP Data Fax Modem
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Davicom Semiconductor, Inc. 21x4x DEC-Tulip compatible 10/100 Ethernet (rev 40)
00:0d.0 Multimedia audio controller: ESS Technology ES1988 Allegro-1 (rev 10)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Trident Microsystems CyberBlade/i7 (rev 5d)

I think I am missing something really basic but can't identify what: if someone has some time to spend I'd be grateful. Thank you.
Rita.

dxqcanada · 04-25-2007, 09:05 PM

Make sure that your boot loader (lilo/grub) is configured to boot your new kernel.
What may be happening is that you are booting your default/old kernel that does not have the modules built.

Check out your /boot directory for kernels ... then check out your boot loader configuration.

ritapas · 04-26-2007, 01:31 AM

Hi,
thank you for your help.

I've checked for that with diff and /boot/vmlinuz is the same as /usr/src/linux-2.6.20.7/arch/i386/boot/bzImage (can't thell why it was renamed)

also, uname -a reports:
linux cino (my hostname) 2.6.20.7

in /lib/modules/2.6.20.7/kernel/drivers/net there is only a tun.ko and a tulip/ dir with five *.ko files in it
no 8139 files.

Any idea of why don't both cards show themselves in lspci output?

See you
Rita

Edit: in case you asked, I forgot to mention that I also updated my pci.ids

ritapas · 04-27-2007, 03:02 AM

I removed the PCI fax/modem and changed slots for the D-Link nic and thus both ethernet cards were recognized by the bios and lspci as well. That's a better starting point!
This evening I'll try again to make them work.
I don't know why the bios disliked the previous configuration: what are four pci slots for if you are allowed to use only two?

See you
Rita

ritapas · 04-27-2007, 03:09 PM

Hello!
I was able to connect the linux box to the Internet and now I'm using ye old, dear lynx.
Needless to say, I'm quite happy.
One step more towards my future without Vista and those spooky TPM...
Have fun!
Rita.