well,

Good afternoon. I have been working on this computer for maybe 3 or 4 weeks now and have had very many problems that I have worked through on it. The thing I've been stuck on for about a week now is that one or both of my PCI ethernet cards won't work.

Symptoms with one ethernet card: eth0 is recognized and initialized and is shown to be working by the OS (redhat). but the LED's on the NIC card do not blink nor can i ping from this computer to another computer on the network or ping this computer from anothre computer on the network.

The network is not connected to the internet, just a couple of computers connected by a hub.

here is some useful information:

OS: redhat 7 or 8
kernel: v2.4.20

NIC: Netgear
I'm not sure of the specific model, but it had this written on the card:
FA310TX Rev-D2


vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
DEVICE=eth0
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=static
IPADDR=192.168.163.10
NETMASK=255.255.255.0


vi /etc/sysconfig/networking/ifcfg-eth0
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=static
IPADDR=192.168.163.10
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=192.168.163.0
BROADCAST=192.168.163.255
ONBOOT=yes
HOSTNAME=server.domain.com
DOMAIN=domain.com

lspci | grep Ethernet
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: Lite-On Communications Inc LNE100TX (rev20)


dmesg | grep eth0
divert: allocating divert_blk for eth0
eth0:Lite-On 82168 PNIC rev32 at 0xc4888f00, 00:A0:CC:62:F0:A1, IRQ 10



I'm not sure what other information would be useful, but I've tried installing and uninstalling. I've tried atleast 3 different NIC cards (all the same make & model)

The computer is actually an old web server and so it worked fine until 3 months ago when we shut it down. I am trying to get it to serve up some php pages utilizing mySQL databases that were already on the server. I don't need it on the internet, just to connect to my network and I can't get it to communicate with the hub it is connected to or anything else it should be doing.

Any suggestions for trouble shooting are more than welcome.

Thanks,

- Brian

Other information I think will be helpful:

- I can ping 127.0.0.1 fine
- I can ping 192.168.163.10 fine

$ ifconfig eth0
eth0

Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:A0:CC:62:F0:A1
inet addr:192.168.163.10 Bcast:192.168.163.255 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:0 errors:75 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:150
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX byutes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:10 Base address:0x8f00

Any suggestions?

Are the link lights illuminated on the hub or NIC?
What is the output of the command mii-tool?
Have tried a different hub port or cable?

Have you checked to see if your NIC is bad? My workstation used to go on and off until I replaced it and since then I've had no problems. Just because it's detected doesn't mean it's working. Also, do was someone already suggested and ping localhost. I hope this helps.

1. No, the link lights are not illuminated on the NIC or the hub.

2.
$ mii-tool
eth0: no link

3. Yes, i have tried multiple cables that i have tested and know that they all work. I left this line of thinking when I saw that the light on the NIC was not on.

I have also tried multiple NIC cards that are precisely the same make and model.

If you're just trying one type of NIC, I would suggest trying another brand. It could be there is no driver for the NIC you're using.

Well, I've used this type of NIC on this specific computer before and it's worked fine using the same OS. I am thinking that I may want to try another NIC anyways because I think there are issues with the drivers on these type of Netgear NIC's, but I do know that the drviers do exist and have been installed previously on the same exact system.

Well, I'm not entirely sure what the problem was. I would speculate that it had to do with the NIC drivers. I put a slightly different model of netgear ethernet card in and after it was installed and configured, my computer problems ended. Thanks to everyone for all the help.

- Brian

Great!