I have a strange problem on a system... No matter what network cards I try, the 2 onboard, usb, pci, (3 different brand/chip 10/100/1000 + 2 different 10/100) no matter the combo of which, only the first 2 I load work, does not matter if it is modules or builtin. the first 1 I load runs fine, the second is intermitten, the third claims to load in the kernel but ifconfig says it does not exist. - Yes I have tried changing which order I load the modules in when done as modules.

board: evga 680i
cpu: core 2 duo 6600
distro: gentoo x86
kernel: 2.4.18 custom build(s) - tried so many options cannot list them all, no effect.


I have never seen this problem before.

I do not have the ability to copy and paste or in any way transfer the contents of ifconfig -a to this system for posting, but I ran it and had interesting results!

eth0 and eth2 are both listed, eth2 is not there, but it suddenly jumps and there is an eth4!

'dmesg | grep eth' shows only messages for eth0-2.


I tried giving an IP to eth4 and it did have conectivity......


Why does it have the wrong ethX number....? I am so lost. :-P