Hello,
I've recently installed Ark Linux(redhat based and my kernel is 2.4.23),
and I like a lot. The only problem is that the system doesn't interact
in some way with the ethernet card. I've tried to get as much info
as I can befor posting this, so . . . .

On a how-to site I learned how to get some system info:

To find out what card is in my computer , as root I did "lspci", and I got
Ethernet controller: Davicom Semiconductor, Inc Ethernet 100/10 MBit (rev 31)

then I checked in "/etc/modules.conf" and the first line was
alias eth0 dmfe
and on the site mentioned above it said that the driver for
Davicom was dmfe

so to see if the driver was loaded I did "lsmod | grep dmfe"
and I got back the output below
dmfe 15713 1
crc32 3740 0 [dmfe]

and the I did "modprobe eth0" but I got no reply

then as root I did "ifconfig -a" and under eth0 I saw

Link encap:Ethernet Hwaddr 00:80:AD:77:95:5E
inet addr: 192.168.1.55 Brast: 192.168.1.255 Mask 255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:46 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:15612 (15.2 Kb) TX bytes:168 (168.0 b)
Interupt:5 Base address:0xc00


and I also looked in the direcory "/lib/modules/2.4.23-0.pre4.1ark/kernel/drivers/net/"
and I found the file "dmfe.O"
Isn't that the module(driver) that my ethernet card needs?

I'm pretty much out of ideas, what do I need to do next, where do I need to look?
If anyone can help me resolve this I'll be very happy. Thanks.

William

So, what exactly is your ethernet card failing to do?

It doesn't seem like you have a problem with your ethernet driver - you are sending/receving packets. Are you not able to access the internet? is that it? Try: dhcpcd eth0

Anything I try to do involving connection to the internet, be it synaptic or Konqueror, fails to connect.

I posted this same question to google groups comp.os.linux.networking and the reply I got told me I should have used "modprobe dmfe" (dmfe being the name of the driver) and not "modprobe eth0"

I did "modprobe dmfe" and got no response

I also tried "dhcpcd eth0" and also got nothing

Ugghhhhh!

need more info.
run "dmesg" and see if there is any interesting messages from your eth card. post them.
"cat /etc/resolv.conf" any nameservers there?
can you ping any hosts? try "ping google.com"
did it resolve google's ip? try "ping 216.239.57.99"

>> run "dmesg" and see if there is any interesting messages from your eth card. post them.

I did that Iand I got a long list of things that all started with the line
usb-storage:

Am I looking for a specific message?

>> "cat /etc/resolv.conf" any nameservers there?

Yes, there're two, and they coorispond to the primary and secondary DNS's I entered.

>> can you ping any hosts? try "ping google.com"

I did that (as well as "http://www.google.com") and got
unknown host

>> did it resolve google's ip? try "ping 216.239.57.99"

the response for that was
connect: Network is unreachable

what is your setup? you have a router connected to your cable modem, and your computer to your router.

I assume you have the right network cables since you are getting packet transmission.
Your ip is 192.168.1.55, and i assume your router is 192.168.1.1, if so can you at least ping your router 192.168.1.1.

What router are you using? does it have DHCP? is it enabled?
If it's not supported/enabled, but pinging your router was successful, you will need to
setup a route to the outside world:

route add default gw 192.168.1.1

(now try to ping google.com and 216.239.57.99)

as for dmesg, it only lists the most recent kernel activity which from what i can tell is flooded with usb storage stuff (you have verbose usb/usb-storage enabled in your kernel) to see all the kernel messages view the log file (/var/log/messages) - and note any interesting eth0/dmfe messages.

>> what is your setup? you have a router connected to your cable modem, and your computer to your router.

Ok, I asked and I was told that my cable from the ethernet card goes from my computer to (through a switcher) the router, and it's Cisco

>> I assume you have the right network cables since you are getting packet transmission.
Your ip is 192.168.1.55, and i assume your router is 192.168.1.1, if so can you at least ping your router 192.168.1.1

I pinged 192.168.1.1. and got
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=(this number just kept growing) ttl=64 time=2.29 ms

>> What router are you using?
Cisco 2600 sieres

>> does it have DHCP? is it enabled?
No, we're only at most 12 or 15 computers on our LAN

>> If it's not supported/enabled, but pinging your router was successful, you will need to
setup a route to the outside world:

>> route add default gw 192.168.1.1

>> (now try to ping google.com and 216.239.57.99)

I haven't done this yet, because I wanted to mention something first

>> as for dmesg, it only lists the most recent kernel activity which from what i can tell is flooded with usb storage stuff (you have verbose usb/usb-storage enabled in your kernel) to see all the kernel messages view the log file (/var/log/messages) - and note any interesting eth0/dmfe messages.

When I looked in /var/log/messages the only reccuring lines with 'dmfe' in it were
dmfe: Davicom DM9xxx net driver, version 1.36.4 (2002-01-17)
eth0: Davicom DM9102 at pci00:0f.0, 00:80:ad77:95:5e, irq5.

What I wanted to mention was this, the cable goes from the ethernet card to a switcher, to a firewall, THEN to the router. Will this make a difference?

Maybe...depending on the firewall setup, but if the other 12-15 worked, i don't see a reason why your's shouldn't (unless you specifically are blocked). Please try pinging.

After I did

route add default gw 192.168.1.1

I shut the computer down and went to lunch, I just got back and I tried to ping google again, and got the same results as before . . . .

ping google.com
unknown host

ping 216.239.57.99
Network is unreachable

did you do route add again after you shutdown? it doesn't stay - i just wanted you to test your connection.

If you did rerun route and you still have problems, i don't think i can help you - i don't know how your firewall is setup.

But at least we established it's NOT your ethernet card - since you can ping another machine and your ifconfig clearly shows that packets are being sent/received.

I just did it and I HAVE CONNECTION!!

xexix, you RULE!!

now, is there any way I can get it to stick? Or do I have to do this every time I boot?

You said you issued "route add default gw 192.168.1.1" and then shut the computer down. Does that mean you brought the computer up again after lunch? The route tables will die between boots, therefore that command will have no affect unless you did something to the startup files.

Just for curiosity, what is the result of issuing the command "route -n" (or just "route") after bootup and before issuing "route add default gw 192.168.1.1" and then after the command (run as root of course)?
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Addendum (a bit slow on this post):
OK, I do not know your distribution. Somewhere in /etc or /etc/sysconfig or /etc/rc.d there are files that set up networking and somewhere you should beable to set the gateway. For redhat, there is a file "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0" for which a line "GATEWAY=192.168.1.1" would do. Otherwise, the best place to put this might be a line in /etc/rc.d/rc.local.

i'm glad you got it to work. I don't know much about the rc configs in a red hat based distro. But i think fsbooks' advice is sound.

i'm glad you got it to work. I don't know much about the rc configs in a red hat based distro. But i think fsbooks' advice is sound.