Hi everyone,

I have just bought a generic PC card based on the RTL8139 Cardbus. When I pop the card in RedHat tried the 8139cp driver and failed. It then suggested I try the 8139too driver.

I did a "insmod 8139too.o" and that came up with a whole bunch of unresolved symbol errors.

From a brief search of the web I discovered the rtl8139 driver and downloaded it. The problem is I cannot compile the rtl8139.c source file.

Has anyone managed to get this card going on RedHat 9? If so, can you please tell me how?

Much appreciated.

Cheers,
Dany.

8139too is a better driver that rtl8139.... what exactly does "modprobe 8139too" report? have you been messing with your kernel?

Ok, I'm a bit out of my depth I guess.....

Let me get this right..........insmod "inserts" a module into the currently running kernel, right?

What does modprobe do? I did as you asked and ran "modprobe 8139too" and voila! it seemed to work! ifconfig returned all the right eth0 values.

Does this mean that next time I reboot, it will detect the card and bring up eth0 correctly?

btw..........no, I have not messed around with the kernel. It's the stock standard updated version, i.e. 2.4.20-20.9 package.

Cheers.

modprobe basically wraps insmod, dealing with additional module dependencies etc...

so now that works you can add an entry to /etc/modules.conf "alias eth0 8139too" (might be "alias 8139too eth0".. can't remember now though!)

There were already two lines in /etc/modules.conf with:

alias pcnet_cs
alias eth0 pcnet_cs

I deleted both lines and inserted "alias eth0 8139too" which didn't work. When I rebooted, it didn't use 8139too.o and eth0 was never activated.

I also tried "alias 8139too eth0" and that didn't work either.

What was I meant to do here?

is there anyway to get 8139too to come up on its on rather than using modprobe each time i start up the computer?

evbart, please do not drag up old threads, if you have a question you should start a new thread, referencing others if you think it is relevant.

you've not said what distro you are using, but assuming it's gonna be redhat or mandrake do exactly what i already recommended above.

sorry bout the post, there are just so many on the rtl8139 chipset topic i didnt know where to start. im using redhat 9 kernal 2.4.20-8.

i did what you said above, but each time i start up 8139too is not listed in the lsmod

when i modprobe it then it looks like its up and running.

it show up in ifconfig under eth0, but there is an interrupt, im not sure if thats a problem or not. is there a definative way to check that my card is loaded and running, when i dont have an internet connection near by?

i dont mind using modprobe each time for now as long as i can get the card going.

thanks for the help, and in the future i will start a new thread.

You don't have to do it every time. Just go into /etc/rc.d/rc.modules (i know it's probably in a different spot on RH 9....just do a search for rc.modules) and scroll right to the bottom and put .......


/sbin/modprobe 8139too


It should load up every time you boot now.