RealTek RTL8129/8139 Fast Ethernet
 

I wanted to experiment with a dual-homed system, so I bought a PCI ethernet card: RealTek RTL8129/8139 Fast Ethernet Card. It works fine under windowsxp which automatically recognizes and installs drivers for it without any help, but not under Fedora Core 4 which I have just started using. The readme file says where to go to get the source code, which I did, but when I try compiling it I just get a billion errors and no files get generated. I'm new to linux and compiling source code. Should I just find a hardware compat file and go with whatever types of ethernet cards ARE recognized automatically by FC4? Where is that list though, I can't find it. Even if I COULD get it to compile and generate some files, then what? Where do I put them? Do they have to be registered?
Help!

Are you positive its a driver problem?
This chip is quite mainstream, i used such cards under redhat 8.0, couple years ago.
Maybe you could try to tweak some config, instead of compiling drivers, which takes a lot of knowledge on specifics and kernel internals.
Search your system for the 8139too (name of the driver).
Use the lsmod command.

OK, lsmod shows:

8139too 30017 0

that the 8139too module is in fact loaded but not being used by anything. Also, I searched and you're right --- there are all the driver source files already on my system.
So, the question now is, why doesn't my PCI ethernet card get recognized? The network card configurator applet says the device (card) does not seem to be present. I know it's the right card because the chip says right on it "RTL8139"
Thanks for the response ---- but what now?

That 0 in the lsmod is not for hardware. It means the driver does not depend on others/isn't any other dependency (i never know exactly which way...).
Try via the comand line:
as root, do:
ifconfig

and

ifconfig eth0

and

ifup eth0

and post here the result.

Maybe the applet is wrong about your card. I wouldn't be surprised if so. And if thats the case, that's the easiest scenario to fix.

[root@localhost ~]# ifconfig
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0B:6A:79:05:F1
inet addr:24.86.xx.xxx Bcast:255.255.255.255 Mask:255.255.252.0
inet6 addr: fe80::20b:6aff:fe79:5f1/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:17977 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:273 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:1151194 (1.0 MiB) TX bytes:39419 (38.4 KiB)
Interrupt:3 Base address:0xc800

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:1470 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1470 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1621248 (1.5 MiB) TX bytes:1621248 (1.5 MiB)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[root@localhost ~]# ifconfig eth0
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:02:44:6B:F7:87
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:5 Base address:0xcc00
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[root@localhost ~]# ifup eth0
/sbin/ifup: configuration for eth0 not found.
Usage: ifup <device name>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The network device configuration applet seems to somehow not grasp the fact that the RTL8139 PCI ethernet card is physically present, or it thinks that the card's 'configuration' isn't present.
lsmod clearly shows the module loaded, though, and I can see the card is there with my own eyes. Oh, I already tried moving the card from one PCI slot to another --- that worked for me once with windows beleive it or not.
:)

Nevermind the applet for now. Do you have two ethernet cards in this computer? It seems so, given the eth0 and eth1 devices listed.
The kernel and the 8139too module seem to be ok with the card.
But there's no valid IP listed for them (notice the field 'inet addr:24.86.xx.xxx'), so there must be some problem preventing you to use them correctly.

Take mine, for comparision:

frank:/home/bruno# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:8D:59:F3:E7
inet addr:192.168.0.3 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::250:8dff:fe59:f3e7/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:16303 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:17264 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:13817956 (13.1 MiB) TX bytes:2512430 (2.3 MiB)
Interrupt:201 Base address:0xc000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:1377 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1377 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:151847 (148.2 KiB) TX bytes:151847 (148.2 KiB)


The 192.168.0.3 IP is an intranet IP. the localhost isn't relevant here.


How do you connect to the internet? What is this card wired to? Cable/adsl modem? A switch? Crossover cable to another computer?
What do you mean by dual-homed system?

Sorry --- I should have provided more information than I did. Yes, there are two interfaces on the system: one is integrated on the mobo and the second, new one, is a PCI based interface. The system is connected to a motorola cable-modem capped at just under 800kbytes downstream.
The output from ifconfig on the integrated (the first and pre-existing) interface is:

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0B:6A:79:05:F1
inet addr:24.86.64.97 Bcast:255.255.255.255 Mask:255.255.252.0
inet6 addr: fe80::20b:6aff:fe79:5f1/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:17977 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:273 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:1151194 (1.0 MiB) TX bytes:39419 (38.4 KiB)
Interrupt:3 Base address:0xc800

The second interface, which incidentally isn't connected to anything at present, is the problematic one. The software alternatingly declares the device to be not present and then says there is no configuration present when it does recognize the device.

ifconfig eth0

[root@localhost ~]# ifconfig eth0
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:02:44:6B:F7:87
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:5 Base address:0xcc00

Tom, I'm having a hard time figuring what's the problem with this card. Did you already try to use it? The absence of an IP is because the card is not connected.

Fedora id'ed correctly this card and the loading of the 8139too proves that.

Everything else is ok, except for the applet, which is no big deal (is that right? I mean, if you manage to config this card without the applet and put the computer to work, you have all the time to fix the applet, right?)

You can skip to the part where you have to set your network, unless I can't see any obvious thing here... Is this computer going to be a dhcp/gateway/firewall? If so you have to configure the IP and IP range, dhcp settings, etc etc.

Why don't you wire the card to the hub/switch or crossover cable, set the whole network and see what happens? And post again, I am curious!

Yes, it's (probably) going to be a NAT box, I have other computers that will be NAT clients of it. The fly in the ointment is this new RTL PCI network card, though --- it won't work under linux. How do I know this? Because I tried connecting the cable-modem through it (the PCI network card) instead of through the mobo network interface and it wouldn't work. No-how, no-way.
Look at it this way. Let's say the mobo interface was unavailable and we needed to use the PCI interface to connect to the internet --- how could we do that? --- given that it doesn't happen automatically. like it does with the mobo interface.

I was following the thread... The card is **exactly** the same care I have in my system (Slack 10.1) and Linux picked it up on the first swap, so ... unless the card is defective I strongly doubt it is a drive problem.
I would try to confirm that the card has no problems by disabling the built-in card (usually via your BIOS) and then try to see if the system "goes with it".
If for whatever reason it does not, try the following:
/sbin/ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.32 (notice that this is an intranet address, you can use whatever you like in the range)

If that gets you a working Nic, the problem is in the configuration.
Keep that card connected and reboot the system and use the bios to re-enable the built-in card.

If you are using an ISP to go to the web you most likely will have to set up one of the cards to accept DHCP, so may as well set that one.

If you get this far and are "functional" with both cards, try pinging the card with the ISP address to confirm that the cards are "talking" the each other and then we will try to go from there.

Hope this helps.

Rick

Maybe when you tried to connect the card to the cablemodem it didn't work because the IP got stuck in the onboard card.
I mean, some ISPs require you to release your IP before you can pick it up again. To the eyes of your ISP, when you booted and the card broadcast the dhcp server for an ip, the ISP wouldn't give it, cause 'you already had one'.
Try to play around with ifconfig and release the ip to test it. Ralvez also gave some good advices.

That was all really good advice guys --- thanks. This particular card, however, not only does not work under my linux installation, but when I install it, it prevents the mobo-integrated interface from working. Following Rick's advice, I disabled the mobo interface, installed the card and rebooted --- it either says 'no link, check cable', or 'device not present'. When I tried "ifconfig eth0 24.86.2.2" to manually assign an IP to the card )as suggested) it retorted: "unknown interface: No such device"
I tried rebooting and not removing the networking info in the applet, and I tried rebooting with the info removed (thinking it might rebuild the right info on reboot) all to no avail. The card works fine under windows, so it's probably not a defective card.
Anything else I could try?

the only thing i can think of is:
remove the module:
rmmod 8139too

then insert it again:

modprobe 8139too

but do this in a real console, not the kde konsole, or gnome´s. This way you will see any messages the driver outputs when loading. Maybe it can help.

Nope. Tried it under all the different permutations of onboard LAN disabled/enabled, setting the RTL as eth0 vs eth1, clearing the applet's config info vs not clearing it --- nothing. The odd thing is that when it starts booting, you can see the card's link light start to flash when the boot process gets to the point where it says on the screen, " Bringing up interface eth0..." and then it hangs for 30 seconds before it declares the bringing up of the interface to have "FAILED" and proceeds with the rest of the boot process.
I tried those commands to remove and reinsert the modules and nothing seems to happen other than the modules successfully get unloaded and reloaded. Why, was there something supposed to happen? And no, I didn't do it using a real command line because FC4 goest staright into gnome, and I don't know how to stop it. I tried a couple things but it just jammed up(hung) and I had to reboot.
OK, lets forget this card, if it takes this much bullshit to get it working, when other cards just plain work right out of the starting gate every time, it's a lost cause. I can return the card for credit. What network would you guys recommend that will work under linux robustly, and without any of this kind of nonsense?

Now I'm really confused --- I just found the official red hat hardware compat dbase entry on this card:

http://bugzilla.redhat.com/hwcert/show.cgi?id=153518

, and it says the RTL8139 is compatible !?! Huh? I was hoping I could just take this card back and look up in this list a compatible card, but if this list says this card as compatible ( which it doesn't seem to be in reality) how can I proceed with this? Just randomly try cards? Any suggestions?