Realtek 8139/810x Family Fast Ethernet probs on any distro

Hi, first for a very basic intro of my linux knowledge. I concider myself a newbie, though I have some experience.
The first linux distro I used was RH 6.0.

I had learned quite a bit (though it is now a vague memory). I learned quite a bit on fstab, mounting, compiling stuff (remember compiling quake 1). I also have some programming knowledge in C/C++ and OpenGL though nothing hardcore.

Anyway, recently I decided to get back to Linux. And I have a new Toshiba Laptop, with an external SATA drive in USB enclosure - which is not exactly the most reliable interface I met. Windows never succeeded to do a 100% format. Had to plug it into a desktop PC back at home to format it.

Now for my real problem.
I tried openSUSE 10.1 - detected all my hardware properly - including my wireless - thought it never routed properly (even after it said it connected to a wireless net), but not my wired NIC - no detection. (oh and it said I have some incompatible Toshiba NIC - which I don't!)

I just then tried Fedore - detected no network device.

Ubuntu - detected much less of my hardware, but it detected my NIC, but when I ran lsmod - it didn't list RTL, or 8139cp or 8139too - so I have no idea as what it was running. I am guessing this onboard variant of the 8139/810x is different.
Tried to install Ubuntu - but the installation kept failing (I am attributing this to the USB HDD thing).

Last resort - I tried Slackware 11 - which succeeded to install on my first go - but i mucked up the LILO part and never booted it.
So I formatted the partitions and never succeeded to install, at some parts of the unpacking it says stuff like:
EXT3-fs error (device sd(8,6)): ext3_add_entry: bad entry in directory: #.....: rec_len is smaller than minimal - offset=0, indoe=0, rec_len=0, name_len=0

So then I tried installing slackware onto my built in HDD - got it up and running, but detected the least hardware (I was using the 2.4kernel - didn't know there was the 2.6kernel included as well).

Anyway, so basically I am now going to aim at re-installing openSUSE, and try figure out what is Ubuntu doing differently to run my NIC and doing so on openSUSE to run it as well. Any suggestions?

Btw, is Zenwalk any good?

Thanks (and sorry for the long 1st post and sorry if it is in the wrong section).

(also in the event the slackware installation is failing coz of the usb thing, i'll install it on my internet HDD and then transfer it to my USB, and edit the lilo conf and fstab accordingly.)

ps my first preference was always to run slackware - coz openSUSE has too much tailor made stuff and seems to remove some of the freedom of redoing parts of your OS. and it is more old school. :P

Any guidance - thanks again.

i might be onto something. Just continued searching and reading onto this forum, and reading other people's similar problems, could it be that this variant of the NIC should use r1000?
I am suspecting so, because people with similar laptops and similar bundled wireless NICs had 81xx series nics, and on lsmod while running Ubuntu (Which ran my NIC), gave r1000 in the list.

So the question, isn't r1000 one of the modules included with most distro's 2.6/2.4 kernel? (I said 2.4 as well since I used slackware 11 on 2.4 kernel).
If not, what do I do from there? Tomorrow (2.20am right now and got to get up early for uni). I'll try re-installing openSUSE and figure out if modprobe r1000 works, if not, what I got to do to get it working.

Am I on a possibly right track guys?
Thanks

ok, finally got openSUSE up and running properly (currently using it to make this post) via wireless. All is left is learning how to install r1000.
Hope this is somewhat usefull to someone, and perhaps someone gives me a hand :P

make[5]: *** No rule to make target `/usr/src/linux-2.6.16.21-0.25/src/Makefile_linux26x'. Stop.
make[4]: *** [_module_/home/ndr008/software/r1000_v1.04/src] Error 2
make[3]: *** [modules] Error 2
make[2]: *** [modules] Error 2

??

i tried editing the make file as follows:
#include $(PWD)/src/Makefile_linux26x
include /home/ndr008/r1000_v1.04/src/Makefile_linux26x

commented out the original file and added my dir, and this is what i got:
ndrlinuxlaptop:/home/ndr008/software/r1000_v1.04 # make clean modules
make -C src/ clean
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/ndr008/software/r1000_v1.04/src'
Makefile:29: /home/ndr008/r1000_v1.04/src/Makefile_linux26x: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** No rule to make target `/home/ndr008/r1000_v1.04/src/Makefile_linux26x'. Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/ndr008/software/r1000_v1.04/src'
make: *** [clean] Error 2

ok now i got this:
make -C ../../../linux-2.6.16.21-0.25 O=../linux-2.6.16.21-0.25-obj/i386/default modules
CC [M] /home/ndr008/software/r1000_v1.04/src/r1000_n.o
/home/ndr008/software/r1000_v1.04/src/r1000_n.c:51: error: expected ‘)’ before string constant
/home/ndr008/software/r1000_v1.04/src/r1000_n.c:52: error: expected ‘)’ before string constant
/home/ndr008/software/r1000_v1.04/src/r1000_n.c:53: error: expected ‘)’ before string constant

but i never touched the source....

the lines the error refers to in the src is the following:
MODULE_PARM (speed, "1-" __MODULE_STRING(MAX_UNITS) "i");
MODULE_PARM (duplex, "1-" __MODULE_STRING(MAX_UNITS) "i");
MODULE_PARM (autoneg, "1-" __MODULE_STRING(MAX_UNITS) "i");

note - this probably isn't going to help you at all, but i thought it was worth mentioning anyway.

I had read that the Realtek 8139 wired ethernet chipset was friendly to most all Linux flavors - even though it was, as some stated, "a second rate cheapo".

I grabbed one for a home theatre pc (PCI - desktop computer type, not built into a laptop - but the same chipset), and it worked plug-n-play with FC5.



If the chipset is, in fact, compatible, it may be that the PCB it sits on is "meshed" in such a manner that forces the 8139 to share resources with other chipsets. The days of a single "modem + audio" card are long gone for desktops, but they still exist in laptops... saves space... saves cost... but now they're "Lan + modem + audio" or something equivelant. My Toshiba laptop has the Atheros 5212 chipset wireless ethernet on the same little PCB controller as the wired Lan (Realtek) and the onboard audio (Realtek). I had to disable loading support for the wired Lan in order to get the wireless to load properly with MadWifi drivers.

Some Toshiba laptops came with the Atheros, but trust me on this, mine is with a realtek.
and though on windows it says 8139/810x, trust me it is not an 8139, I tried so many times to use a 8139cp or 8139too module - pointless, and only recently I came accross someone mentioning a satellite pro laptop using the r1000 module. Then I loaded Ubuntu live off the DVD (the only distro that succeeded to run my NIC straight away), ran of lsmod, and vuola, r1000 was listed (Which is also the driver Realtek are supplying for the 810x (but if you have a specific 8139, then it is a different matter. I am sure the real confusion with this device was the fact that the windows driver displays 8139/810x.

Oh, and someone else displayed what some hardware detection software was displaying before he ran r1000 - and it is the same as YaST is saying.

So all I need now is help to compile r1000 v1.04. Thanks

Oh and regarding the meshed bit - yeah my friends Toshiba (which was more expensive then mine has that).
My two NICs are totally independant - sure on this one too.

to compile r1000 v1.04 I changed MODULE_PARM to MODULE_PARM_DESC in file r1000_n.c (3x)

Thanks so very much.
Ok so i'll give anyone the solution to it.

These are the steps I followed for r1000 v1.04

I copied the r1000 files into /root/r1000
such that I had /root/r1000/src/..... files
and /root/r1000\Makefile

I edited /root/src/Makefile_linux26x
and changed
include $(PWD)/src/Makefile_linux26x
to
include /root/r1000/src/Makefile_linux26x

then I edited /root/r1000/src/r1000_n.c (thanks to dotato)
and changed the 3 lines startting with MODULE_PARM to MODULE_PARM_DESC

as root I wrote
make clean modules
make install
depmod -a (no idea what it does but it was in the readme)

then I ran r1000.
Started up SuSE's YaST, went to 'view hardware'
Closed it.
Opened up Netword Devices (still in YaST) and there was my NIC ready for configuration!!!

Joy oh joy!
It finally works.