I'm trying to enable gigabit networking on my slack 12.1 / 2.6.24 box. It has an nvidia NIC built into the motherboard which is supposed to support 1000baseT, but no luck so far.

Is anything obviously wrong & fixable in the info below? Or should I just go and buy a better NIC? :\

> dmesg | grep eth0
forcedeth 0000:00:07.0: ifname eth0, PHY OUI 0x20 @ 1, addr 00:21:85:64:10:8f

> ethtool -i eth0
driver: forcedeth
version: 0.61
firmware-version:
bus-info: 0000:00:07.0

> ethtool eth0
Supported ports: [ MII ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 100Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: MII
PHYAD: 1
Transceiver: external
Auto-negotiation: on
Supports Wake-on: g
Wake-on: d
Link detected: yes

You might try using the official nvidia drivers for the motherboard via ndiswrapper, although you are probably better off getting a better NIC !

Have a troll through the HCL for known working cards first.

I went for the third option - switch my server over to Arch linux. So far so good - ethtool says "eth0 Speed: 1000Mb/s"

Farewell Slack, old friend