Admitted newbie here ... installed Red Hat 8 ... applied all packages to get current ( i.e. I got the blue check mark thingy).

PROBLEM IS ... if I log on normal (or the wife or the kids) ... we can't surf the net or get e-mail because eth0 is not active ...

SO ... I go to "System Settings / Network" ... am prompted for the root password (which I enter) ... I get to the "Network Configruation" screen and I "activate" the eth0 device. From then on life seems good (well I do have some other things I'll be posting ... but I'll follow protocol for now).

ALSO , I also noticed later ... as I was documenting this post ... that if I have already activated eth0 and I am later logged on as root and go to "System Settings / Network" ... I get the following popup message prior to gettting the "Network Configuration" screen ...

"eth0 has an alias to module 3c501 in modules.conf,
instead of currently loaded module 8139too!"

Confused newbie needs help ! Any help always appreciated.

Check in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 whether you have

ONBOOT=yes.

Also check /var/log/messages and /var/log/dmesg

for any complaints about eth0

Check /etc/sysconfig/hwconf

and find out the type of ethernet card that has been detected

You can also type dmesg | grep eth,
this will display the network card information and the eth device it is assigned.

has followed up

ok ... ppuru, thanks for the suggestion, but ... it's already set to yes ... contents of "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0"are as follows ...

# Please read /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt
# for the documentation of these parameters.
USERCTL=no
PEERDNS=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
DEVICE=eth0
HWADDR=00:10:b5:3b:a4:f6
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=yes
~
~
=============================================

Mathieu ... thx also ... not sure what it means but here is the result of doing dmesg | grep eth ...

$ dmesg | grep eth
divert: not allocating divert_blk for non-ethernet device eth0
divert: no divert_blk to free, eth0 not ethernet
divert: not allocating divert_blk for non-ethernet device eth0
divert: no divert_blk to free, eth0 not ethernet
divert: not allocating divert_blk for non-ethernet device eth0
divert: no divert_blk to free, eth0 not ethernet
divert: allocating divert_blk for eth0
eth0: SMC1211TX EZCard 10/100 (RealTek RTL8139) at 0xc8927000, 00:10:b5:3b:a4:f
6, IRQ 9
eth0: Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8139B'
eth0: Setting 100mbps full-duplex based on auto-negotiated partner ability 41e1
.

==============================================


no change in status ... eth0 still not active on startup

perhaps you made a mistake in installing the ethernet card.try to plug out the card and restart linux,remove your net card configuration.and then plug in your card ,let the system recognize your card ,i think it will be ok

is the network daemon running on startup

Check /etc/modules.conf

and comment the alias entry that points to the 3Com driver (if you have only one network card on your system)

Following jayakrishnan's suggestion, do a

chkconfig --list network

to verify network services are indeed started at boot.