Losing network connection
 

Newbie here, so please excuse my ignorance. I just installed Debian (Sarge) without any issues. I am trying to get KDE running, but every time I try to run it I lose the network card and cannot get it back without reinstalling Debian. Someone please help before I rip out any remaining hair that I have on my head.

what do you mean you lose your network card? you have no internet connection? you may need to just edit /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/network/interfaces files with the appropriate settings.

I already checked the etc/resolv.conf and /etc/network/interfaces and they are correct. If I do a modprobe e1000 (e1000 being the network card) I am told that there is no such device. It only stopped working after I went into /etc/kde3/debian/ and did startkde. After that I am not able to get out to the internet to retrieve anything.

Try ifconfig and if the network card is not listed then do modconf and install the driver again. This happened to me last week after an update. I did the update and I lost my cards and had to re-install the modules - why? who knows.

Thanks TigerOC. That's exactly what happened. The card is not listed when I do the ifconfig. How do I go about a modconf to reinstall the drivers?

Bring up a consol and as root do modconf. This will list all the modules - go down the list to network cards select and then select the driver for your card and install. Now do /etc/init.d/networking stop then /etc/init.d/networking start. Do ifconfig again to check the card is running.

I am not able to see modconf. Is this a shortened version of something? I have been using Linux for about 2 weeks so I may not know what that command is. On another note, I started from scratch and tried to run X Window System instead of KDE. I got the same result. I lost all network contivity and eth0 is gone. Where so you go in debian to "reinstall" the drivers?

From the command line as root (i.e. if you are a user you will need to enter su and it will ask for your root password) enter modconf. If it tells you that the command is not found then check you are in root.

You don't have modconf installed.

do apt-get install modconf

if you don't have a internet access from debian download the file and
install with dpk

OK, I started from scratch and installed the Debian base system. Went back in and did a apt-get upgrade and everything went OK. This time I made sure that I did an apt-get modconf. When I went into modconf I noticed that the network card is not in the list. I am using an Intel Pro/1000. Is there somewhere that I can download the appropriate drivers for this card? Or is this card just not supported?

Driver can be found here The driver should be put into in the 2.4.x modules as e1000 according the the above link.