Hi!


As an exercise, we were required to install RH9(Kernel:2.4.20) on a quite new IBM thinkcenter. The installation went fine, and only a couple of devices (motherboards onboard devices) were not usable. One of those was the onboard network card, which was picked up, but perhaps due to network drivers, it failed to operate.

Since there was a time limit, it was decided to install a PCI NIC, which was of course recognized without a problem.

After the project was done, the system was left as it was, for further experiments.

Later, I looked at the network configuration GUI, and saw that 2 NIC profiles were present, all for 2 different physical cards. eth1 was running fine, while eth0 (I believe it was the onboard card) was disabled.

When I attempted to enable the device (eth0), it gave an error complaining that the device was not configured, so I ran ifconfig and set the IP to a static (and valid) IP. When restarted, the onboard nic was working fine besides the PCI (eth1)

However, the system was shut down, and moved to another location. When booted, eth0 could no longer be found, and only the PCI card operated. When eth0 was to be enabled, it complained that there was no such device. As an attempt, the profile was remived, and after the onboard NIC could not be seen.

My question is:
How would it be possible to make redHat9 recognize the onboard network card, and use it? (If reinstall is required, will do).

If anybody could provide help on how drivers on linux could be installed correctly for such devices, it would be greatly appreciated (from my questions, you probably already recognized that I am new to Linux).


Thanks!

Sonajiso