Hey all, I was hoping to tap some of the local wisdom as to why this may have happened. I'm running RedHat 9.0. I decidede to recompile my kernel so that I would be able to include NFS support and include PPPoE so that I could route from my DSL line.

So, I compile in all of the things I want, update Grub to see the new kernel and EVERYTHING works...EXCEPT THE TWO NICS!! Very puzzling!

With the old kernel (the one that resulted from my initial redhat install) and both nics work just fine. I tried using the redhat "hardware browser" to activate the nics with the new kernel, but that didn't work.

If anyone could point me to some online reseach I could do, or has an idea as to what might have happened that would be terrific.

I'll be happy to provide any additional details if what I just tried to describe wasn't clear enough.

Thanks!

Is your new kernel the same version as the old one? If so....

There's a chance that what used to be eth0 is now eth1 and vice versa. This is a common problem when compiling new kernels of new versions.

What does ifconfig -a show?

Thanks for the reply! And yes, it is a recompile of the same kernel: 2.4.20-8

I tried running /sbin/ifconfig but the only thing it shows is the local loopback device. I haven't tried the -a switch tho. I will have to try that when I get back home in a day or so.

Any idea what to do about eth0 and eth1 switching if that is the problem? Also, it's interesting to note that the "hardware-browser" in the gnome interface acknowledges both those cards but refuses to "activate" them.

Thanks!

if ifconfig doesn't show anything, then eth0 vs eth1 isn't the problem.

1. What does lspci show?
2. Did you compile the drivers for your nics?
3. Did you compile them into the kernel or as modules?
4. If the latter, did you try loading the modules manualy?

I just learned about the lspci command and it does seem to indicate that the cards are there. I'm not that good at interpreting its output yet, but I was able to glean enough to understand that the cards are showing up with this command.

I am pretty sure that the drivers were compiled as modules, but I haven't yet had the opportunity to modprobe for them. Unfortunately, I might not be able to tell you much more than that until I get home for some further experimentation which will be tomorrow.

But thanks again for your help and I will let you know what I find!

I dont know if this is related, but when I recompiled my redhat 9 kernel to include acpi, my wireless ethernet stopped working. I traced it to /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia. Something about not being able to load modules with the .o extension in the name.

Here's an excerpt from my home page.

"In my case the kernel upgrade broke pcmcia. My 802.11b card no longer got detected. After looking at /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia, I put in a quick hack. In the following section of pcmcia, delete the .o extensions:

grep -q pcmcia /proc/devices
if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then
if [ -d /lib/modules/preferred ] ; then
PC=/lib/modules/preferred/pcmcia
else
PC=/lib/modules/`uname -r`/pcmcia
fi
KD=/lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/pcmcia
if [ -d $PC ] ; then
echo -n " modules"
/sbin/modprobe pcmcia_core.o $CORE_OPTS
/sbin/modprobe $PCIC.o $PCIC_OPTS
/sbin/modprobe ds.o
elif [ -d $KD ] ; then
/sbin/modprobe pcmcia_core
/sbin/modprobe $PCIC
/sbin/modprobe ds
else
echo $" module directory $PC not found."
break
fi
fi

After the modifications, it should show:

/sbin/modprobe pcmcia_core $CORE_OPTS
/sbin/modprobe $PCIC $PCIC_OPTS
/sbin/modprobe ds

It works for me. I dont know what it breaks though."