I realize that there have been a couple threads already on the following problem, but they were not sufficient to resolve my problem.

I recently installed Suse 9.1 personal on a Dell Poweredge SC420 server. Suse was unable to recognize and configure my Broadcom onboard NIC, so the only avaiiable interface is loopback. I manually installed the bcm5700 driver module from the Suse installation CD with insmod and verified with lsmod. Then I deleted all the network interfaces in YAST (it had mistakenly identified it as an ATA card) and created a new one called eth0 set up to use the bcm5700 driver. Everything seemed to go fine and YAST listed it as already configured with DHCP, but then when I tried "ifconfig eth0" it gave me a "device not found" error.

I've seen some reports that patching the OS and/or upgrading the kernel solves this problem. Since I can't use YOU, I downloaded all the patches from ftp.suse.com on another machine and burned them to CD to do a patch via CD. It managed to scan the CD and create a listing of patches but then when it came to installing them, it couldn't find any of them on the media...

Can anyone give me advice on what to try next at this point? Have spent way too much time on this already.

Thanks.

When you insmod or modprobe a module, look at dmesg again to see what the results were..
eg modprobe 8139too
gives
8139too Fast Ethernet driver 0.9.26
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:0d.0
eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0xc4822f00, 00:90:0b:04:47:91, IRQ 11
eth0: Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8100B/8139D'

The module loaded and initialised the card to become eth0
If the card doesn't initialise properly, you won't get an eth~ stated.

You might try using a generic driver to get it started, eg ne, then upgrade to the broadcom module later.

Hi

Thanks for the response. I actually got rid of Suse 9.1 personal and installed Fedora Core 4 instead and the network card configured fine. Sort of makes sense because the Dell I'm running is a Poweredge server so its possible that Suse 9.1 Personal is not set up to deal with Server hardware (since its intended for desktop use).

Anyway, problem resolved.

It's a pity that some distros have hardware compatability problems.
I know that RedHat want to be up2date with as much hardware as possible to keep a market edge.

The process of adding a driver module isn't difficult, but usually distros are more focussed in the markets they come from, SuSe being a european distro where Dell aren't that big.

Did you find your NIC in the LQ Hardware Compatability List?
Would you mind adding a comment there about the Fedora support and SuSe's lack of support. That can help other people gain from your experiences.. Thanks.

Done.