I have bought a Asus A8J laptop a few days ago and yesterday installed SuSe 10.1 . I made the machine dual-boot with WinXP home.

However, I cannot connect to my ADSL router by either wired or wireless approaches. I can live without the wireless connection, but if I can't connect at least with a wired link, I the laptop is pretty much useless to me and I will need to return it within 3 days. Hence the urgency in this post.

During installation, I tried the network tests - which failed - but I couldn't see a resultant log to show you. I will try another re-install if people suggest this.

Post-installation, I tried to add eth0 as a new network device using YaST, but again I couldn't make a connection using the SuSe Network manager. I tried as root

ifup eth0

but got the response:

Interface eth0 is not available

I should mention that my router works fine (I'm using my desktop to write this post and its connected to the same router, and my WinXP box on the Asus machine has no problems connecting to the router wired or wirelessly).

Any suggestions are really appreciated!

My guess is you have to load the module for your network card. post the output of lspci and lsmod in this thread. Also tell us which wireless card and built-in wired card the laptop uses.

Thanks for the very quick response.

The wireless card is an IntelPRO/Wireless 3945ABG. I had to go onto Windows/Device manager for my wired card, but the only other connection is a RealTek RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC, so I guess that is the wired card?

<<lspci.log START>>
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 71c5
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Unknown device 8168 (rev 01)
06:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0832
06:00.1 Class 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19)
06:00.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843 (rev 01)
06:00.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 0a)
06:00.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 05)
<<lspci.log END>>

<< lsmod.log START >>
Module Size Used by
cpufreq_ondemand 10632 2
cpufreq_userspace 8448 0
cpufreq_powersave 5760 0
speedstep_centrino 11184 1
freq_table 8448 1 speedstep_centrino
edd 12484 0
snd_pcm_oss 47104 0
snd_mixer_oss 20480 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq 53360 0
snd_seq_device 11916 1 snd_seq
snd_hda_intel 21652 1
snd_hda_codec 137856 1 snd_hda_intel
snd_pcm 86788 3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_timer 25860 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd 57092 10 snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 13024 1 snd
snd_page_alloc 13576 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
lp 15012 0
parport_pc 39524 0
parport 37192 2 lp,parport_pc
xt_pkttype 5760 3
ipt_LOG 9856 8
xt_limit 6528 8
ip6t_REJECT 8960 3
xt_tcpudp 7040 3
ipt_REJECT 9216 3
xt_state 6016 12
iptable_mangle 6656 0
iptable_nat 11652 0
ip_nat 20268 1 iptable_nat
ip6table_mangle 6272 0
ip_conntrack 49880 3 xt_state,iptable_nat,ip_nat
nfnetlink 10264 2 ip_nat,ip_conntrack
ip6table_filter 6656 1
ip6_tables 17604 2 ip6table_mangle,ip6table_filter
iptable_filter 6912 1
ip_tables 16196 3 iptable_mangle,iptable_nat,iptable_filter
x_tables 16388 10 xt_pkttype,ipt_LOG,xt_limit,ip6t_REJECT,xt_tcpudp,ipt_REJECT,xt_state,iptable_nat,ip6_tables,ip_tabl es
joydev 12992 0
sg 35996 0
st 38684 0
sd_mod 20352 0
sr_mod 18596 0
scsi_mod 128008 4 sg,st,sd_mod,sr_mod
ipv6 242272 15 ip6t_REJECT
button 10640 0
battery 13444 0
ac 8964 0
apparmor 53144 0
aamatch_pcre 17408 1 apparmor
nls_iso8859_1 8064 2
nls_cp437 9728 2
vfat 16000 2
fat 51356 1 vfat
loop 19080 0
dm_mod 57936 0
i8xx_tco 11032 0
intel_agp 24988 1
agpgart 33352 1 intel_agp
ide_cd 39840 0
ohci1394 34224 0
ieee1394 93880 1 ohci1394
ipw3945 173600 0
cdrom 36512 2 sr_mod,ide_cd
ehci_hcd 31880 0
uhci_hcd 32400 0
usbcore 116612 3 ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd
ieee80211 32968 1 ipw3945
ieee80211_crypt 9728 1 ieee80211
firmware_class 13952 1 ipw3945
reiserfs 217856 2
fan 8580 0
thermal 17416 0
processor 31208 2 speedstep_centrino,thermal
piix 13316 0 [permanent]
ide_disk 19200 6
ide_core 123340 3 ide_cd,piix,ide_disk
<< lsmod.log END >>

Looking around at other forums, I get the impression I need to compile the RTL8168 driver from RealTek. I tried to do that, and installed gcc 'by hand' (The YaST software update wouldn't install it - I'm fairly sure that that was one of the bugs in YaST which I would be able to fix if I have the network connection to install the SuSE 10.1 patches), but couldn't get the make to work.


Am I going in the right direction?

The info I used regarding the RealTex driver is from this thread:
http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/in...howtopic=36365

Yep, you should be able to just make the change in your kernel's .config file and place an 'M' beside the realtek network driver.

once you save the changes, type make modules_install and that should create them. Once that is done, modprobe for that driver, which is probably rtl8169 but you could do a find /lib/modules -iname 'rtl*' and that should give you the name of the module

--edit--
after reading that suse forum thread, perhaps the kernel doesn't have that NIC driver yet and that is why they gave the instructions to use src files from realtek's website. I'd check for a kernel driver before using something from the manufacturer, but either way should get your up and running.