I recently installed Fedore Core 1, my first Linux install in a few years. (this time for sure).

After a few initial problems I was able to get the machine working. All was well.

However, last night I compiled and tried out the 2.6.4 kernel. This too went smoothy, with a couple of minor exceptions.

Firstly, my network card stopped working (eth0). It Fails on startup.

Secondly, my sound card has stopped working.

As these things worked first go when I did the initial install of Fedora Core one, I have no idea as to where to look to start working out what has gone wrong.

Could someone please offer me some suggestions as to how to approach these problems.

Have I posted this in the wrong area?

what sound card do you have? what network card do you have?

1) first you must knows about your sound card, and LAN card i mean the manufacturer.
2) during make menuconfig select all the proper modules "options" for you sound card and Ethernet interface

However upgrading to new kernel sometime do cause these problem however after 2nd or 3rd attempt i hope you will manage to make running all you hardwares devices

Sometimes it takes more than 2 or three attempts to get that perfect kernel though so just stick with it. The kinda tricky thing is navigating through the somewhat eccentrically organized menus and finding all the modules you will need. If it's not removable, you might want to just click Y to that piece of hardware instead of M. but then again that will restrict you from upgrading "just that module". Once you have everything going, i would experiment a bit with optimization and options that you have no idea what they do. It's a fun way to learn. Just make sure you don't overwrite your stable kernel. the grub manual is useful for that.

The sound card is a Creative SB AWE64. Could not be a more 'supported' sound card in history, could there?

The network card is a cheap no name type that I bought for $15AU about a year ago. Linux calls it a Macronix Inc MSIC| MX987x5 .

What is odd is that during boot up of the new kernal something called 'Kudzu' (or something like that) appears during bootup and tells me that my Marconix network card had been removed from the system and asks me if I want to 'remove the configuration', 'keep the configuration' or 'do nothing'.

I tell it to keep the configuration but then see when the boot up continues that it cannot start eth0.

It also I told me the same about the sound card. Neither work with the 2.6 kernel.

But what makes this very odd is that the sound card does not work with the OLD kernal anymore. It did before. And when in X I go to the menu/System Settings/Soundcard Detections and it reports that no sound card can be detected. This happens in both bootups.

You are right that the Creative SB AWE64 is a supported card. Although the sb16 would actually be more popular in terms of "most supported in history". Since it is a Pci card and should be automatically detected i assume you have not enabled it in kernel configuration. You have a choice of either Alsa or OSS drivers with that card under sound in the kernel configuration. Both should have drivers for it. just select M or Y to those cards. I recommend using Alsa. Your network card is "tulip" based. Actually quite nice for that price. Make sure you select the tulip driver under your network hardware configuration. Both the sound card and the network card are probably failing due to you forgot to compile with the kernel. Simply selecting those two with M or Y should set you on the right track. Generally, hardware is configured and set up transparantly. Kudzu is just a redhat/Fedora tool to aid in the finer details of hardware configuration. Think of it as a "add new hardware wizard" of sorts. Hope this helped.

arrr yes.. The sb16. How could I forget.

Thanks for the tips psyborgue. I'll try it out again tonight when i get home. (9.00am here in Sydney right now and I am at work, not where the machine is).

I'll post my results here later.

So how did it go?

I have the same problem with the same sound card. Even after recompiling the kernel (2.6.5) with ALSA support and AWE64, I still get "No soundcard was detected". Is this an ALSA problem, a Fedora problem, or a kernel 2.6 problem?

For getting for eth0 interface up check the IP setting in your NETWORK CONFIGURATION WIZARD. I too had this problem of the eth0 not comming up at boot time, but when i entered the appropriate data in the NETWORK CONFIGURATION i got the card up. The wizard asks for your ip address, the gateway, dns, etc...

Alas, before I had a chance to work any more on the Linux box, all Sh1t hit the fan.

The company I work for landed a large and very urgent job that I am writting in ASP.NET, C#. I had to take the linux hard drive out of the box (until a later date) and put in a new drive and install Win2003 server, Visual Studio .NET, SQL Server etc. <sigh>

I hope to get back to my Linux Learning and HTPC Project in the next few weeks when I should have more time and the head space to take it all in.

To tell you the truth, I might even give Fedora 2 a go and if it finds my sound card and NIC without the nonsence I have gone through with this kernel install, then I won't want to know why they did not work. There are far more important, interesting and productive things to learn in Linux than which deep and dark line in what config file will get my very old and VERY supported sound card going 'beep'.

This is an interesting topic. I also always had Kudzu killing my hardware when trying to boot into the new kernel...
So I have reasons to believe that Kudzu is the responseble one here

Is there a way to shut it off without manually deleting every trace of Kudzu? :P

Have you tried shutting it off from the "Services" configuration tool? It's somewhere in the menu.