I'm having problems with my network card. It seems like it was detected ok, but
I can't get the network to do anything.

Im using Mandrake 9.1
my ethernet card was detected as ADM983 Linksys Etherfast 10/100
(I got that from Mandrake Control Center\Harddrake).

The network card isn't working though, and the light on the card isn't even on.
The network card was working fine this morning, but I bought a new harddrive
(and scrapped the old one).

So the question is, how do I troubleshoot this? Once I get the card working I
can hold my own, but I've never had to troubleshoot a network card in Linux.

any help would be greatly appreciated!

thanks,
dbc

PS i just discovered the "Before you post: What to include in a Hardware question", but I can't find /sbin/lspci . "whereis lspci" returns nothing - any ideas?

here's a little more info:

first, this computer is only connected to an offline network. (all i have are a
bunch of winmodems, so no internet for my linux boxes!)
i'm trying to set up this computer as a fileserver using samba and apache. all
i really need to do is get a successful ping, after that i should be able to
figure it out myself.

I *am* able to ping the loopback and local IP - does that mean that the card is
working on some level?

anyway here is the relevant stuff from "cat /proc/pci":
Ethernet controller: Linksys Network Everywhere Fast Ethernet 10/100 model NC100 (rev 17).
IRQ 11.
Master capable. Latency-55. Min Gnt=255.Max Lat=255


and it looks like i'm running 2.4.21-0.13mdk kernel

The loopback working just means that TCP/IP is working. Try using the network wizard in the Mandrake Control Center to configure the card.

What does the output the following command say about eth0?
/sbin/ifconfig -a

Have you Verified the cable is good?

OK, I switched cables, and sure enough, the light is working on the card now. the bad news is that I still can't get the card to work! What exactly do the lights on the card tell me? I ran ifconfig -a after trying to ping computers on my LAN (and got no responses...)

$ /sbin/ifconfig -a
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:04:5A:75:D4:1D
inet addr:192.168.0.20 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:110 errors:216 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:432
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:13620 (13.3 Kb)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x1400

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:328 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:328 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:26030 (25.4 Kb) TX bytes:26030 (25.4 Kb)

any help deciphering this ifconfig output would also be greatly appreciated - what are TX and RX?

BTW lspci is in my /usr/bin directory (using MDK 9.0).

Depending on the card there may or maynot be a couple of LEDs. One means you have a link established. The other is an activity light i.e. it blinks when there is data being transmitted or received. Does any lights blink when you ping?

RX - received
TX - transmitted

RX Bytes - How many bytes received
TX Bytes - How many bytes transmitted

I assume the IP address subnet matches the rest of the network?

Any firewalls running on the other computers? If so then that could be causing a no response.

Is Plug and Play disabled in the motherboard's BIOS?

Don't see really anything obviously wrong.

Might also post the network configuration too. Other computers, hubs, switches etc.

Look at the output of:
cat /proc/interrupts

Is anything else using IRQ 11. Its ok to have more then one device using the same IRQ.

Try Booting to BIOS settings and make sure Plug n' Play OS is set to OFF in it.