I had, like many others, problems with my laptop onboard ethernet card running on suse pro 9. It is a sis900-based card, and was not working at all, even though the driver was loaded and the card recognized.

I then upgraded my kernel to 2.6, using suses own rpm to keep things plain and easy. Just click the button and you got 2.6 kernel, sweet.

I then rebooted, no network...
I edited /etc/modules, no network...
I added a modprobe to /etc/modules, no network...

However, when I did a modprobe sis900, and then a rcnetwork start, everything ran fine.

Delving deeper, I stumbled upon the /etc/sysconfig/kernel file. I never did any kernel tweaking before, even though I've used linux for 5 years now, but this was easy. On my suse distro, there is a line called "MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT". After that one comes an array of modules. On a whim I added "sis900" so it now reads "MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT="cdrom ide-cd ide-scsi sis900"". Reboot and boomshakalak, everything works.

Downside: My sound chipset is not working currently, due to some weirdness in the 2.6 kernel I got. But fair enough, the speakers on my Amilo D1840 are crap anyways, and internet is more fun...

Oh, great great great great gread!! Thank you, ill try that in a minute