Linux Leaves My NIC Disabled
 

I have a Mepis installation on my hard drive along with WinXP and a few other Linux distros. Everything seems to work OK, but when I run Mepis and then shutdown and start WinXP or some of the other distros, the nic is in some hard disabled state. The only thing that will enable the nic is, while powered down, unplug the power cord. Some of the linux distros are able to enable the nic when they boot up, some aren't.

Mepis must be setting a bit somewhere that puts the nic into an unusual state, and when the nic is completely without power, it must reset to a default state that WinXP and the other distros recognize.

So, my questions: Does anyone have any suggestions to solve this problem? Is there a shutdown script that I could edit to eliminate this problem?

Note: I have posted to the Mepis forum and to a Debian forum and have gotten no response. This is about my last hope for some help.

Thanks, jimbo

This is possible, and the exact fault would be specific to the network card driver. Different distributions will have different versions of the same driver. I'd recommend finding out the network card and the chipset it uses as a start point (Google is your friend). You can then do more targetted searches and post a very specific question, which is more likely to generate responses.

Sorry, the nic is a Broadcom 440. It works properly with every other distro that I have tried, so I thought it might just be something Mepis does during the shutdown sequence. Hence, if there is a way to edit or configure the shutdown sequence there might be a way to fix the problem.

jimbo

It's really the enabling or disabling of the network interface, and what is happening with the kernel driver module that's likely to the issue, rather than just the shutdown (remember that you can enable/disable interfaces at any time). It's possible that the module is being loaded with or without a driver-specific option that it needs.

Not knowing much about Debian, I can't really give you more specific advice than to start with www.google.com/linux and search for Debian Broadcom 440 to find out what the bug is with the Debian kernel.

I have Knoppix, Debian rc3, DSLinux and Santa Fe distros all installed on this PC. I believe all are Debian based. Mepis, also Debian based, is the only distro with this problem. And the nic works just fine while Mepis is running. So, I had the idea that the problem is specific to Mepis.

Thanks, jimbo