Hi there,

I am planning to use redhat 7.1

The network card is realtek 8139 ( i am not sure about this i know this as i installedwindows 2000 to find out whether network card is functioning, i am sorry about that as i am a newbie with time constraint )

when i tried installing, it says network installed but not working. what may be the problem?. can it be a driver problem?
also i have the driver for that card in a floppy. if the problem is in driver how do i proceed to add this driver. as i amanewbie i request with some details.

I am really in bad shape. Can sb. help me asap?

This is definately not asap but hopefully helpful none the less.

The realek 8139 card is supported well under the linux kernel since 2.2 something or other, perhaps older.

You need to trouble shoot a few things.

After bootup type this:
dmesg | more

This will allow you to scroll through what was detected and some kernel level hardware stuff. There is a lot more in there but look for your 8139 information in there.

Also, do this:
cat /proc/pci

Look for your ethernet card in there. If both of those items check out, which they should then do some other things.

ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.35 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

This will give your first ethernet card an ip of 192.168.1.35 with a netmask of 255.255.255.0.

After all that, try to ping yourself.

If that checks out, set yourself up a default route.
route add default gw 192.168.1.1 eth0

This will set a default gateway of 192.168.1.1 for that card.

Now ping something on the Internet like 204.26.64.1 (that is a qwest dns server). If that goes you are set to go.

You must set some dns server information in /etc/resolv.conf as well. type "man resolv.conf" to figure out how to do this.

Good luck!

ifconfig -a will list all installed cards

Good point.

Simplicity is a good thing.

/*manpage
if a single -a argument is given, it displays the status of all interfaces, even those that are down. Otherwise, it configures an interface.
manpage*/

try turning off plug and play support in bios. My network card was showing me the same bug because of the stupid P&P.

You also need to check that the correct kernel module is being loaded for this card, do (as root) "lsmod" and look for the module 8139too. If it's not there do "modprobe 8139too" and then do "ifconfig -a"

Yeah. Look in files /etc/rc.d/rc.modules (or something like this i'm using slack so it's a bit different). And uncomment (erase the #) the modules your network card use. (the line /sbin/modprobe something below your card name) so it will modprobe each time you boot.
Modules is like drivers if you didn't know it hehe

Great! half-elf
Sudarshan.