Hi,

I've tried to install Suse 10.1 on my computer. Everything works except for the fact that my network card (Realtek RL8211B) couldn't be detected (my sound card couldn't be detected, either, but that's not my main problem right now). The mainboard is an ASRock ALiveNF6G-DVI.

Since I'm pretty much a newbie concerning Linux I've got no idea what I should do now so I'd really appreciate any help or suggestions.

Bye,
athene

First, you'll need to download a driver for that NIC from the Realtek site. I think the r1000v_5.tgz one should do. If you can't find it, drop me a mail at spamnot@<removethis>polard.com and I'll mail it to you. I'm not sure if this driver will work with your 8211B, it did work (partially) with my 8111B Gigabit adapter on a GA-945PL-S3 motherboard with FC6 under a 2.6.18.1 kernel.

Please note though that this driver currently seems broken - my onboard NIC worked only intermittently with this driver.

However, getting the driver and installing it is the first step to getting your 8211B to maybe start working.

hi -- I just had similar problems with a Realtek 8111B that didn't work and I couldn't get the driver to compile. The latest stable release of the linux kernel 2.6.19.1 has support for the 8111B. I downloaded and compiled the new version from kernel.org and it works great, without having to mess with installing the Realtek r1000 driver.

Also, suse 10.2 uses a backport of the 8139 driver from the 2.16.19 kernel and it works as well. The easiest thing for you to do might be to just install (or upgrade) suse 10.2 instead of 10.1. Good luck!

Hi,

thanks for the advice. I haven't tried the suggestions yet since I've had some trouble with broken hardware.

Nevertheless, I've kinda solved the problem by using an older network card which is supported by Suse.
I guess I'll update to Suse 10.2 as soon as I know a bit more about Linux. Otherwise, I'll probably manage to destroy the entire system and I so don't want that to happen after all the time it took me to solve the other problems I've encountered.

Read as much as YOU can, then ask more questions. It is worth the time to learn Linux. Try........http://tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/howtos.html and www.google.com

In RealTek FAQ (Communications Network ICs> General Questions):
"RTL8201, RTL8201BL, RTL8201CL, RTL8201CP, RTL8201N and RTL8211B(L) are all PHYceiver. That is a driverless hardware device. Software driver are relative to Network controller ( MAC ) which is integrated into chipset in such case mostly. Please contact your mother board maker or chipset manufacturer to obtain proper driver support". In my case I had an ASRock ALiveNF7G-HDready motherboard with NVIDIA® GeForce 7050 / nForce 630A MCP Chipsets. So I sought in NVIDIA web page and I found my driver there: http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_nforce_1.23.html. Just a click on the corresponding rpm (I use CentOS 5.0) and everything was fine. I hope it helps