My question, short version:

How do I make an ethernet interface show up on ifconfig? I inserted my PCMCIA ethernet card into my laptop and loaded the driver with modprobe, but "ifconfig" still only lists the "lo" (loopback) interface and no "eth0" or "eth1".

Long version:

I booted the Xubuntu live CD on my old laptop, and it was able to see my PCMCIA cards: an ethernet wired connector card (Belkin), and a wireless card (Lucent Orinoco). I was able to connect to the Internet. The "ifconfig" command showed settings for "eth0" and "eth1" as well as the usual "lo".

However, when I actually installed Xubuntu onto the laptop and rebooted, the installed Xubuntu failed to recognize any of the cards, and "ifconfig" only lists the standard "lo" (loopback interface) and was missing the "eth0" and "eth1".

I listed the installed modules (drivers) with "lsmod", both using the installed Xubuntu and the live-CD arrangement. I saw which modules were not installed in the installed version (they were "orinoco_cs" and "pcnet_cs" and "8390", among others), so after rebooting into the non-live-CD version, I installed them using "modprobe orinoco_cs" etc.

So, now I can use "lsmod" to see that the modules are loaded, but the "eth0" and "eth1" interfaces still don't show up under "ifconfig". How can I get the interfaces so that I can access the Internet?

Thank you for your help.

try 'ifconfig eth0 up'

That should only work if ifconfig actually detects the eth0 interface; i.e. if it knew there was an eth0, then ifconfig can turn it on or off. But ifconfig doesn't even detect it.

I tried it anyway, just in case. It said: ERROR getting interface flags: no such interface (or something like that).

I wonder if I have to create some /dev/eth0 or something like that? Do I do that with mkdev? Anyone know any Google keywords I can look up?

check dmesg output