Jul 19 04:13:41 localhost ifup: 3c59x device eth0 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization.
Jul 19 04:13:41 localhost ifup:
Jul 19 04:13:41 localhost ifup: interface 'eth0' not found
Jul 19 04:13:41 localhost network: Bringing up interface eth0: failed

Been gettin this error since i had RH 8 installed. Switched to Fedora Core 2, problem was fixed but the message keeps showing up. Anyone know how to fix this?

Hard to say anything without knowing what the
hardware actually is mate ...

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html


Cheers,
Tink

yea..thanx for the spam
wasn't lookin for a link on how to ask questions but i didnt know i needed to be specific bout a simple question as that. maybe its just u that dont know?

its on a prortable sony vaio running Fedora Core 2 basically, u really need more info than that to answer a simple question?

donno what u tryin to prove with the link, if u want to know sumthin bout hardware then jus ask.

I'm not even going to dignify that with an answer ...

not a surprise, quit replyin if u aint gonna post sumthin useful, u wastin space.

can sumone SERIOUS answer not actin like a lil kid n wasting my time.

Look, Tinkster has 6000+ posts to his name. Chances are good he knows something. What he was trying to get from you was specific information about your setup. You are coming to the board asking people for help. It's just common courtesy to provide as much information as you can to help other people help you.

Yeah, the Red Hat kernel seems to detect an ethernet card. Red Hat also seems to identify it as a 3Com network card. However, that doesn't mean Red Hat was right. It might be helpful if you found out exactly what kind of networking chipset is in your laptop and include it in your post. You say you have a Sony Vaio. I know there are lots of different models of them; only you know which model you have, and that means only you can open your documentation or visit the Sony site to check for specifications.

It's the same things as a car mechanic. When the shop asks "What kind of car do you have?" you don't respond with "broken" or "4 wheels" or expect them to investigate it themselves.

So breathe deep, relax a little, and don't take everything as a personal attack. If you do, then you're going to alienate yourself from a lot of smart people on this forum (Tinkster being one of them).

aight lemme start over,

3com megahertz 10/100 LAN CardBus PC card but like I said internet n everything works fine just that message

PC is a Sony Notebook Computer PCG-9D6L..

..cant think of anythin else off the top of my mind that would help, if u need more lemme know.

I can't say for sure whether this is the problem or not, but I've experienced something similar. On a laptop I have, I use a PCMCIA card for networking. The card works fine, but I get a message much like you do: delaying/backgrounding initialization. I don't remember the exact message, but the startup prompts do say "bringing up eth0 [failed]". The reason for this is actually simple: the kernel is trying to load network drivers before it loads PCMCIA drivers. The configuration files tell the kernel there is a network card, but the kernel can't access it because PCMCIA hasn't been initialized. Shortly after, I get a Initializing PCMCIA message of some sort. That goes off without a hitch, and I can connect just fine once fully booted.

So how do you "fix" this? I'm not positive, because I just left it alone. If I were to try, the first thing I would do is check the order of the boot scripts. Try to rearrange things so that PCMCIA/Cardbus support is enabled before network initialization. I don't know how easy/difficult this is, but I'll look at my scripts and see if I can find something useful. Worst case scenario: grep your scripts for the startup messages (like "initializing network") to identify what files are performing which actions.

where would i check for the order of the boot scripts?

thanx for the reply.

Alright, Linux booting crash course (a bit more involved that your basic Windows autoexec.bat) - you may need to read this a few times to have everything soak in:

Disclaimer: This is how Red Hat does things. Other distributions may vary, but they should have the same basic format.

Your system operates in "runlevels". A runlevel is just a number (up to 6) to indicate which mode of operation the computer should be in. The ones you would be most interested in are 3, 5, and maybe 4:
3 => Normal operation (all services enabled) - terminal for login (no graphical environment)
5 => Normal operation (all services enabled) - graphical environment started automatically
4 => not always used, but is sometimes used instead of 5
The other runlevels are for things like single-user mode, rebooting/shutting down the computer.

You have a collection of startup scripts that perform things for you such as enabling services. On my system, they are located in /etc/rc.d/init.d

Here's how the runlevel work with those scripts:
In /etc/rc.d there is a subdirectory for each runlevel. Their names are rc0.d, rc1.d, rc2.d, ... , rc6.d, and they correspond to the runlevel of the same number. In each rcX.d directory is a number of symbolic links. In case you're not familiar with them, a decent analogy is to think of a symbolic link as a shortcut; it points to another file/directory. Those links have a special format for their name, and tell the system what scripts to execute when entering a specific runlevel. Here's the breakdown of a link's filename format:
XYYZZZZZZ
X = 'S' or 'K' ('S' means "start" and 'K' means "kill")
YY = two digit number indicating numeric order (10 comes before 11, 15 comes before 16, etc.)
ZZZZZZ = some meaningful name for the purpose of the link (usually a copy of the script's name it is linking to)

So, when the system boots (or changes runlevel), it looks at the corresponding rcX.d directory, and begins starting/killing processes as indicated by the links in the directory. The links almost always refer back to a script in /etc/rc.d/init.d. So, time for an example:

Assume you had this in /etc/rc5.d:
S15network (and assume it points to ../init.d/network)
S20pcmcia (and assume it points to ../init.d/pcmcia)

When your computer enters runlevel 5, it will execute the network script before the pcmcia script since 15 < 20. IF you have two files like this and they are easily identifiable, you can simply try reversing their order. Just use the mv command to rename the pcmcia link. Something like:
mv S20pcmcia S14pcmcia

It can be any number as long as it's lower than the number used for the network script. Or conversely, you could change the network link so that it's number is greater than the pcmcia link.

If you cannot determine which script is performing the operations, then you'll need to inspect the scripts. So, go to /etc/rc.d/init.d and grep for the known message displayed at bootup. For me, network messages are "Bringing up interface YYY". Doing
grep "Bringing up interface" *
tells me the network script is what displays that message. Do something similar for the message you get for your network initialization and pcmcia/cardbus activation. Once you know the scripts that are performing those activities, go back to the rcX.d directory, and find out which links point to those scripts, and then modify their start numbers like described earlier.

thanx for the info Dark_Helmet

much more helpful info then i was actually lookin for,

i did the 'grep' command and came up with this

so im guessing its the network script..

so i went back to /etc/rc.d/rc5.d and changed pcmcia to run first

gonna reboot to see if this would fix it, if not im goin to be puttin in sum more work into rc.d and tryin to solve the problem.

Dark_Helmet your a GENIUS man...

rebooted to see if it worked and came out PERFECT. No more error message showing up.

And thanx for the course in linux booting man, something interesting to experiment with