Kevin -

My problem is resolved - it was a PCI issue solved by changing the Operating System to "Other". It is a Phoenix bios, but HP's version. I did set DHCP and everything worked after a reboot.

Chadian22 -

When the machine is booting, do you see a line fly by that says "Bringing up interface eth0"? Does it have a green "OK" next to it, or a red "FAILED"? If you don't see it at all, you didn't save the config so the interface gets activated at every boot. I've been playing with RH8.0 for weeks and didn't get into this aspect very much in 7.3.

Bob

yes I have noticed this many times during boot. It says [FAILED] when trying to pull up the Eth0 ... It's the only [FAILED] I get ...

okay, if the module is loading, then its finding your card. If you can run netconfig and set it up for DHCP and that doesn't fail, then it should show up in 'ifconfig'. If it can't find the card, it won't run 'netconfig' without error.. and if it can't find the DHCP server, it will give you an error before netconfig is finished.

At least thats how it usually works for me. Okay.. lets try this.
On a fresh reboot, capture the output of "lsmod". Show me that.

Then run "modprobe -t net *"

Then capture the output of another "lsmod" and show me that.

Then run netconfig and set it up for DHCP.

When that is done, show me the output of "ifconfig -a".

Now.. there is something else to consider. MY cable service requires the DHCP request to include a valid hostname. A Windows DHCP client request includes this by default, but a Linux DHCP client does not. If your cable provider gave you two IP addy's... did they give you two hostnames?

If they gave you a hostname for the linux box, you need to add a line like this to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 :

HOSTNAME=whatever_they_gave_you

Do this after trying the netconfig for DHCP above.
Then you would run "service network restart".

(my script looks like this:

DEVICE=eth0
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
HOSTNAME=CY615927-A

so yours should be similar)

Now... if NONE of this works, you might want to make SURE that you are actually being granted more than one IP addy. You can do that by bringing up two Windows boxes if you have them. If you don't, you might be able to shutdown the one you have and bring up just the Linux box.

-K.

oops. I mean to say. .. what do you mean you want a capture. Do you mean like a screen shot , through print screen? or do you want a capture of ismod when I type it in?? I will try to do my best with what you have told me.. Thanks!

Kevin -

No offence or disrespect intended. Just want to offer my experience when I was getting the same Bringing up interface eth0 [FAILED] message. What I did to find the problem was different than the troubleshooting path you suggest. Please don't hesitate to comment when you see what I suggest...

Chadian22 -

After you boot and see the [FAILED] message, log in as root and bring up a terminal window. Type in dmesg and hit enter.

Look down through the diagnostics until you get to the section about the natsemi driver.

Mine, which is now working, looks like this:

natsemi.c:v1.07 1/9/2001 Written by Donald Becker <becker@scyld.com>
http://www.scyld.com/network/natsemi.html
(unofficial 2.4.x kernel port, version 1.07+LK1.0.14, Nov 27, 2001 Jeff Garzik, Tjeerd Mulder)
divert: allocating divert_blk for eth0
eth0: NatSemi DP8381[56] at 0xcc862000, 00:02:e3:23:63:e3, IRQ 3.
eth0: link up.

Note that it assigned the NetGear card to IRQ3. My original problem was that just before the natsemi section was an error message stating that it could not find the IRQ for pin 9 on the PCI device.

In the BIOS settings, setting the Operating System to "Other" rather than any of the Windows choices completely fixed the problem. Did not have to do anything else since I had configured it for DHCP earlier. The earlier settings just took over and now all is well.

I bring this up because many other people posted messages offering me the same procedure that Kevin graciously describes. None of that worked for me - as long as the card doesn't get an interrupt assigned, no amount of configuration and scripting will help.

This is a good quick and easy check that may help get you on your way.

Yes - I'm posting this on the very machine that had the problem - using Red Hat 8.0 and Mozilla...

I mean just show me what it says... you can redirect the ouput like this

lsmod > lsmod_before.txt

Then the output will be in lsmod_before.txt instead of on your screen. To view it, just "less lsmod_before.txt" or "cat lsmod_before.txt"

This file will be overwritten if you redirect anymore output to it with a " > ". If you want to append to it without overwriting, you could use " >>" and it will just take the new output onto the end of file.

Its just a way to keep you from having to type so much.. but in this case, because its a network card we are dealing with, you would have to then copy the file off to a floppy and put it on your windows box so that you could cut and paste it in here.

It may be easier to just type it out. Its up to you.

-K.

No offense taken!

Just trying to help. IRQ problems have been pretty much a thing of LONG ago for me, but as you situation demonstrated, I guess it can still be a problem with some machines.

-K.

I'll admit that I had to dust off a few brain cells when I saw the IRQ-related error messages :-)

Some folks are a little sensitive when people suggest things a little out of the box. Just wanted you to know that I also am just trying to help. Thanks!

Ok right before where you have the IRQ problem mine says
"Found IRQ 10 for Device"

Hey Kevin. I am still having a hard time understand. I am a big time newbie and trying hard to comprehend. Here I have posted of what I've gotten so far.

It just says Can't locate something.txt.
What exactly are you looking for. what information from what source?

Okay... basically, I just want to know what modules it shows loaded after a fresh reboot. You get that with "lsmod".
Then I want you to run a "modprobe -t net * " and then another "lsmod" and see if its now got any modules loaded that werent loaded before.

Then the other stuff that I listed.

-K.

forget that link. DOH!. Anyway, what happens is when i type insmod it just brings up a whole bunch of "-" commands. for insmod

ismod does nothing but iNsmod does something