PCMCIA detection problems
 

Hey,
I just installed linux (Mandrake 9.1) on my Compaq Armada E500. I got everything working except the network card. It won't auto-detect the network card in harddrake but it does show the info about the card.
The card is a Xircom RealPort RBE-100 10-100 PCMCIA CardBus.
It says on sourceforge that the card is supported with the xircom_tulip_cb drivers.


Ifconfig eth0 shows:
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:10:A4:B6:13:EC
UP BROADCAST RUNNING 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:100
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x4400


I have no idea what to do now, please help me out so i don't have to go back to windows!

thx

Your card appears to be found and willing. You need to configure your card with a ip address, netmask, gateway. I am not sure what the Mandrake utility for doing this is. There should be something in the documentation.

Agreed, the card is functional.

go to the menu, configuration, then mandrake control center, you'll see the network/internet, choose that, just don't change the module when it asks "which module should I try".

Thanks for your responces.
But where do I configure the IP address and netmask?
Threre's nothing in network/internet etc except the wizard to select the module and how to connect (ie pppoe) and a few lines to fill in about account name and password.
If I do all that correctly it just says at the end "No ethernet network adapter has been detected on your system".
And in hardware section to configure the module for the ethernet there a plenty of fields like
debug/max_interrupt_work/rx_copybreak/crs0/etc etc

But nothing that looks like a place to fill in the IP and netmask (where do i do that?), and is it really as simple as plugging those in somewhere and then just running the config wizard again and it'll work?

Thanks a lot for any help.

First, try it from the command line:
1. ifconfig eth0 ipaddressgoeshere (something like 192.168.0.10)
2. route add default gw ipaddressofgatewaygoeshere eth0
3. ping -c 4 ipaddressofgatewaygoeshere

if that works, then you can skip the whole wizard thing and open /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and add your stuff there, heres what a bare minimum ifcfg-eth0 would look like:
DEVICE=eth0
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
IPADDR=192.168.2.98
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY=192.168.2.1

check also the contents of /etc/resolv.conf making sure there's a nameserver ipaddressofgateway line, and the contents of /etc/sysconfig/network, giving the box a hostname and making sure the gateway line in that file is correct

ok sorry for being such a super newb...but i can run the first three commands fine (the first two have no output but i guess that's fine?) and it pings it fine with the third.
Now with the ifcfg-eth0 I can open that in KDE but then it wont let me save the changes...if i type that command line in the terminal it doesn't do anything. how can i get it to reconize me as root user in kde to let me play with those files? or should i do it in the terminal, if so how?

One other thing should the gateway just be the same as the ip address if it's just connecting directly to the isp? like my isp said to put the ip as 192.168.x.x is that what i should be in as the gateway too?

thanks so much for your help!

I'm not quite understanding what the isp told you to set, explain again please...
as for editing, open a Konsole, type su, give the root password (nothing will echo) then you'll be root until you type exit, be very careful what you type as root, doublecheck before hitting enter, then type kate /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 &, that's and ampersand at the end. Kate will open and allow the edits, then save the file and type exit in the Konsole to go back to your normal self. But first we need to know what you're supposed to have in there.

ok thanks.
ifcfg-eth0 seems all good to go. About the isp. I was just saying that the IP that I was suppose to put was 192.168.x.x and was asking what the gateway should be, is it the same as the ip?

otherwise:

/etc/resolv.conf
it says:

search *name* local
# search *name* *name*
# ppp *i put in 192.168.x.x*

is that all good?

and for:
/etc/sysconfig/network
it has:
networking=yes

what else should i put in there?


again thanks so much.

sorry, had to change a tire on my daughter's car...
anyway, yes, the gateway is an ip address, but for a wireless device it's typically the ip address of the access point or the router, does this make sense in your situation?

oops, sorry about that wireless stuff, wrong thread...;}

I was just told by my isp that the gateway is assigned by the server and so I'm either suppose to put nothing or a dummy IP such as 2.3.4.5 or whatever. And the IP is 192.168.*.* just to find the network card, my ip would later be assigned by the server.

Are the rest of the files mentioned above alright?

thanks!!

just edited out the confusion over the wireless bit ;)

You'll need to modify the ifcfg-eth0 file to get an address via dhcp, so try BOOTPROTO=dhcp, and see if things go ok, the other files you can safely ignore since the dhcp client fills in the blanks. To test things before editing that file again, do this:
dhcp eth0, when it returns do ifconfig, take a look at the entry for eth0 and it's hopefully new ip address, it should be different than the 192.168.x.x at that point. Don't post the full address back here (security) just the first 6 digits: xxx.xxx

I'm pretty sure the isp tech guy said they don't use dhcp.
But anyway I tried dhcp eth0 and it said dhcp isn't a command.

Ifconfig now shows:
inet addr: 192.168.x.x (same as before) and there's a different one for Bcast, but I assume inet addr: is the one we want?


thanks!

Yes, the rest is pretty much automatic, you rarely need to set it, at this point the card is considered "up", meaning it has an ip address, and it has the one they instructed you to use, correct? If so, then you are ready to test, although if they aren't using dhcp I'm at a loss to understand how you're going to get a "real" internet address. How are things hooked up there? eg: dsl modem connected to what?

ok so assuming dhcp works....i put that in bootproto
ifconfig now has:
eth0 blah blah blah
and now it has also:
eth0:9
and it has a new ip address 169.254.x.x

what now?

I have my card in the laptop connected to an adsl modem which is connected to the wall......I don't have any router or anything set up.

I was afraid of that, see I'm thinking that they *do* use dhcp, because if you decided you wanted to setup a router there, that would seem to me to be how the router would get a wan (wide area network) address from your isp (I have cable, so I'm stabbing in the dark here).

a wan address is an actual valid internet ip address meaning anyone out there on the web could ping it if they knew what it was, a lan (local area network) address (class c) like the 192.168.x.x address you have there is not reachable directly from the web. If your card doesn't get a valid wan address assigned to it somehow then you're cut off from the web. I'm not sure what differences there are in the dsl setup from my cable setup, I have 2 routers and 2 switches which connect eventually to the cable modem's one ethernet connection, the router closest to the modem has an actual wan address which it gets via dhcp.

In any case, just for kicks (I screwed up the dhcp command earlier, I don't use it much here, sorry bout that) can you try dhcpcd eth0, and if that doesn't fly, try dhclient eth0.