I've just bought an Equium A110-233. I partitioned the hard disk so I've got XP and Fedora Core 5 (FC5).
XP works fine when I plug in the network cable, but FC5 (or at least the Linux kernel) does not seem to be able to find and activate the network card.

The message I get is "8139too device eth0 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization". The 8139too module is in memory as is mii (which points to it).

Somehow I need to get Linux to detect that the card is there, but I just don't know how to do that. Can anyone help?

Thanks.

What does lspci (-vv) say about the card?

: lspci -vv
...
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Unknown device 8136 (rev 01)
Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Unknown device ff00
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Latency: 0, Cache Line Size 10
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
Region 0: I/O ports at 4000 [size=256]
Region 2: Memory at da000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at d4000000 [disabled] [size=64K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=375mA PME(D0-,D1+,D2+,D3hot+,D3cold+)
Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
Capabilities: [48] Vital Product Data
Capabilities: [50] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit+ Queue=0/1 Enable-
Address: 0000000000000000 Data: 0000
Capabilities: [60] Express Endpoint IRQ 0
Device: Supported: MaxPayload 128 bytes, PhantFunc 0, ExtTag+
Device: Latency L0s <1us, L1 unlimited
Device: AtnBtn+ AtnInd+ PwrInd+
Device: Errors: Correctable- Non-Fatal- Fatal- Unsupported-
Device: RlxdOrd+ ExtTag- PhantFunc- AuxPwr- NoSnoop+
Device: MaxPayload 128 bytes, MaxReadReq 512 bytes
Link: Supported Speed 2.5Gb/s, Width x1, ASPM L0s, Port 0
Link: Latency L0s unlimited, L1 unlimited
Link: ASPM Disabled RCB 64 bytes CommClk+ ExtSynch-
Link: Speed 2.5Gb/s, Width x1
Capabilities: [84] Vendor Specific Information
Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
Capabilities: [12c] Virtual Channel
Capabilities: [148] Device Serial Number 36-81-ec-10-00-00-10-01
Capabilities: [154] Power Budgeting
...

: lsmod|grep 813
8139too 25409 0
mii 5313 1 8139too


: ifup eth0
8139too device eth0 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization


Hope this helps you to help me---thanks!

Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Unknown device 8136. 8136 perhaps is the answer. try to use the older version of the realtek driver before 8139.

Hi,

I tried the RealTek RTL8129 and got the same error message.
However, in addition modprobe can't find rtl8129.

There are no other realtek drivers listed by neat. Are there any generic ones that are worth trying? (And if so, how do I make them appear in /sys/module ?)

Thanks!

about generic driver, perhaps you can try the r1000 driver.
i don't know what's with rtl8136. people here talk about 8136 as not yet fully supported: http://www.mail-archive.com/netdev@v.../msg20667.html

That link was a help... at least I now know that it is a general problem, and hopefully will be fixed.

Just to let you know that I could not get Fedora Core 5 to recognise the network card, no matter what I tried.

In the end I tried a Kubuntu live CD and that worked perfectly, so I've now installed Kubuntu on the laptop. So far it works with the wired network, reads/writes to usb memory and reads CDs and DVDs. Haven't had time to test anything else yet.

do you mean the network card is already recognized in kubuntu? perhaps what you only needed was a kernel upgrade.

No, it wasn't a matter of a kernel upgrade.
When I installed Fedora it put on 2.6.15. I then copied (via memory stick) 2.6.17 (and 2.6.18 from testing) rpms, and neither made any difference.
I then tried a Kubuntu live CD which had 2.6.15, and voila it just worked.
So my guess is that the Kubuntu people have put on their own driver for that card that the Fedora people aren't using.

As it happens I'm v. happy to use Kubuntu (although look forward to them making KDE 3.5.4 available since that's got some nice improvements and bugfixes over 3.5.2).

oic. hey gentoo does these things too. think about using gentoo anytime ok

Will do. I always end up building a few things from source either because they're not in the formal distributions or because I really do need the bleeding-edge versions, so I'll try gentoo when I get my next machine (probably a replacement for my 5 year old desktop machine) in a few months time.