This is my first foray into the Linux world so please excuse my ignorance!

Its a brand new fresh system with P4 2.8, Gigabyte 8I915P, Highpoint 1820A Sata RAID 5, 1GB Corsair DDR2 with Redhat 9 2.4.20 installed

On installing it it has failed to recognise the onboard LAN (aswell as sound but not bothered about that). I checked gigabyte's site for drivers but 'shock horror' there are only 5 flavours of Windows to choose from.

Is there anywhere else I might be able to find drivers (its an onboad Broadcom 5789 NIC I believe)?

I also read somewhere here that Redhat 9 is an old distro now so would replacing that with something more recent like Fedora 4 automatically find the LAN?

Thanks for any help, I'm desparate to get this Linux thing working for me and Windows is whispering quietly from the other side of the room "Install me, I can solve your problem......."!!!

Cheers

You said:Almost certainly - though you could try upgrading the kernel to something 2.6-ish? (Not for the faint hearted.)

BTW: since you're new: how do you know RH9 dosn't see the LAN card - what have you tried? (i.e. looked at dmesg and lspci or are you relying on the wizard?)

Reading the HCL for Broadcom LAN cards - the 5788 is listed as working with ACPI switched off and the tg3 or the bcm5700 drivers.
bcm5700: http://www.broadcom.com/drivers/downloaddrivers.php
tg3: http://www.mike-devlin.com/linux/driver.htm

Broadcom claims their bcm5700 driver will work for the whole 57xx range - looks right up your alley don't it?

However: FC4 is much better supported (i.e. you can get automatic updates) and generally easier to handle than RH9. (Though some folk have had trouble installing as dual boot on SATA RAID - you didn't say if this is to be a dedicated box.)

Should you choose FC4 (say: you like RH from what you've seen) then look at:
www.fedorafaq.org for basic tips and hints
www.mjmwired.net for a detailed and solid FC4 install/post-install

Alternatively - Ubuntu is probably the easiest distro to install I've ever seen, with really good HW support. Knoppix is also good for HW support, though not as freindly.

Have fun.

Thanks a lot. Just got an email back from Gigabyte saying "err.... no, sorry. Linux is open source so go make your own drivers". Which was nice and helpful

/sbin/lspci says

3.00.0 Ethernet Controller: Broadcom Corporation: Unknown Device 169d (rev11)
4.00.0 Ethernet Controller: Broadcom Corporation: Unknown Device 169d (rev11)

Pretty much everything else is Intel Corp. Unknown device, ATi Technologies: Unknown Device etc etc. (I'd copy 'n' paste if I could get it onto this computer!)

I'll have a look at the Broadcom stuff and give it a try but FC4 is looking like an attractive option. It is a dedicated box to run as a file server but hasn't got anything else installed yet so it's no hassle to wipe it & start again.

Thanks

Ian

OK lspci is telling you the card is "seen" by RH9. So it should be possible to make and install a module for it and thus get the card recognised.

However - with FC, you will have the heady experience of having an up to date OS