Gentoo Installation

cjtenny · 01-01-2005, 06:27 PM

I'm installing Gentoo 2004.3 (liveCD) on my ancient laptop, with a pentium III coppermine @ 645 Mhz.. (don't laugh too hard) and I'm trying to help it find the network card.... it's wired networking, and on my last installation it used xirc2ps_cs.... how can I load that driver in gentoo and get it to work? I don't know too many kernel commands, because I'm a relative linux n00b...

qwijibow · 01-02-2005, 10:16 AM

modprobe <module_name> will load the driver.
lsmod will print a list of already loaded modules.
rmmod <module_name> will unload a driver.

run the following commands and post what they output.

"dmesg | grep eth0"
"cat /proc/pci" | grep Ethernet"
"lspci | grep Ethernet"

you will need root access for the last command

cjtenny · 01-02-2005, 08:12 PM

I just tried suse, which I could install, but I had to skip the network step. My network card is the RealPort 10/100 fast ethernet, but should use the same driver as the CE3-10/100, which is what my old distro thought it was.... will those commands work for SuSE 9.1 Personal? everything but the network (and a quick monitor thing) is set up...

qwijibow · 01-02-2005, 11:50 PM

yes, those commands will wor for any distro.
those commands dont do anything.

the first command will let me know if the card is working, and driver loaded.
the second 2 will give clues about which driver needs to be loaded.

cjtenny · 01-03-2005, 03:42 PM

I tried them, and uhoh... they all had a blank output, except for the second one, which didn't get the directory. here's the output...
by the way, the host name is part of a joke between me and my dad, that's why it's a bit strange...

Code:

monkeybox:/ # dmesg | grep eth0
monkeybox:/ # cat /proc/pci | grep Ethernet
cat : /proc/pci: No such file or directory
monkeybox:/ # lspci | grep Ethernet
monkeybox:/ #

and I was root, but that's all that happened.... but next I tried re-setting up the card with YaST, and retrying these, and I got: the same thing... now what?

qwijibow · 01-03-2005, 04:27 PM

hmmm... from that output it seems you dont have a network card.
what happens when you "modprobe <module>" using the module name the other distro used as a network card driver ???

cjtenny · 01-03-2005, 09:12 PM

It had a successful output, no return (aka new line), but I think it won't detect the card.... if it could detect it that probably would work...

qwijibow · 01-04-2005, 09:51 AM

Quote:

what happens when you "modprobe <module>" using the module name the other distro used as a network card driver ???

?

you must have a strange network card... even before linux loads my network card driver i get the following output

Code:

bash-2.05b$ cat /proc/pci | grep Ethernet
    Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8029(AS) (rev 0).
    Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 16).

cjtenny · 01-04-2005, 07:04 PM

no kidding its strange its a xircom RealPort Etnernet 10/100 (RE-100) and I think it's older than me! can anybody help me or point me to a way to get it working? or if I can't do that, anybody gotta cheap iMav G4 to sell? (looking at buying one...)

qwijibow · 01-05-2005, 08:07 AM

You said the card worked on anouther distro ?
what driver did the other distro use ?
and what happens when you modprobe that driver in the current distro ?

cjtenny · 01-08-2005, 03:09 PM

It was an old redhat distro with xirc2ps_cs as the driver, and when I use that driver in this distro it doesn't work... I think it wont detect the card, so the problem would be with detecting the right slot, not the specific card driver.... but that's just me...

qwijibow · 01-08-2005, 06:35 PM

error messages ????????
what happens whan you modprobe xirc2ps_cs ?

cjtenny · 01-09-2005, 05:25 PM

it loads it successfully, but interent still doesn't work...

qwijibow · 01-09-2005, 05:47 PM

there's more to getting the internet working than just modprobing a driver.
you have to start the interface either with your distro's netowrk tools, OR with /sbin/ifconfig

after you have modprobed the driver, run "dmesg | grep eth" whats it say ?

cjtenny · 01-10-2005, 04:43 PM

I'll try it pretty soon, but I'm bogged down with english hw, might not be able to return results until sometime tomorrow...