device eth0 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization.

bdmeyer · 06-17-2009, 09:01 PM

I have spent two evening trying to figure this one out.

I have swapped out four known working, different bran network cards.
Each one I get the same error as in the subject.

If I boot to a Live CD such as CentOs 5.3 LiveCD both Nics are given an IP.

This seems to only be happening with my CentOs 5.3 server install.
oddly, I noticed the CentOS Live CD the Nics were reversed from eth0 to eth1 and eth1 to eth0.

At the moment as of the output of the commands, I am running two identical Nics, since the first one has always worked. I have previously used an rtl8139, 3com c3905-TX, onboard Rhine III based (now disabled)

Here are steps I have done to try and figure this out:

Quote:

[root@centos ~]# lspci | grep -i eth
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6105/VT6106S [Rhine-III] (rev 86)
00:0e.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6105/VT6106S [Rhine-III] (rev 86)

Quote:

[root@centos ~]# cat /var/log/dmesg | grep -i eth
eth0: VIA Rhine III at 0xee800000, 00:1b:11:bb:17:7d, IRQ 177.
eth0: MII PHY found at address 1, status 0x786d advertising 05e1 Link 45e1.
eth1: VIA Rhine III at 0xee000000, 00:1c:f0:09:ca:e9, IRQ 185.
eth1: MII PHY found at address 1, status 0x786d advertising 05e1 Link 0021.
[root@centos ~]# device eth0 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization.

I went through the system-config-network-tui.
I copied /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 to the ifcfg-eth0 and edited for sanity.

and as stated earlier, have swapped out four different nics for eth0, and booted to two different LiveCD's. Both LiveCD's work fine.

I am failing to do something. any help is appreciated.

--Bruce D. Meyer

GrapefruiTgirl · 06-17-2009, 09:26 PM

This may be off-base and not helpful as it seems so simple, but it had me going in circles for quite a while back when I installed two identical NICs into my firewall machine:

Is there any chance you are trying to boot and/or bring up the two interfaces on the same subnet?

If so, it didn't work for me, but I didn't know it for DAYS!

I was swapping them in and out, testing them each by themselves, switching them into every combination of PCI slots in case I had a dead slot--- it was just all because I was trying to bring them up on the same subnet.

As soon as I tried:

NIC A = 192.168.0.10
NIC B = 192.168.2.10

(Note the 2 and the 0) It worked! Presto!!

Again, sorry if this is something you already checked a dozen times, or isn't the problem at all, but maybe...

Sasha

bdmeyer · 06-18-2009, 07:33 AM

Thanks Sasha,
Actually eth1 is 192.168.1.8 static, and eth0 has no IP assgined, bootproto=none, as it is a promiscuous nic for Snort sitting on a hub between my Cable router and Wrt54gl which provides dhcp for the network.

For fun, I did give it a static but still came up with that error.

What I don't understand is why lspci shows the nic(s) being present, and networking reports the correct nic, and then it says it doesn't seem to be installed.

--Bruce

GrapefruiTgirl · 06-18-2009, 07:58 AM

Another idea;

Have you looked into your computers BIOS to see if you can configure the IRQs used for each PCI slot?
If you can, try to see that each PCI slot you are using for the NICs has a different IRQ assigned. Maybe there's an IRQ conflict.

Kind of a long shot, but who knows, it may be helpful..

Sasha