Hi folks,
I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions abouta problem that I'm having with my laptop and networking. Below is a description of the problem. Please note that networking *does* work, if I wait until a certain point during boot up (like after the loop back test, I think). I plug in, new hardware is found, and I have internet access.


Install went fine. I had networking, right up until the point when
the install finished. I know this, because I could see the lights on
the dongle. Everything rebooted, eth0 wasn't found, bye, bye networking.

Now, if I boot up the computer with the network card in, I get no
network. If I pull it out, reboot, then push it in the slot after boot up,
then I get a network.

Here are the technical details - or at least as many as I know at this
time.
Computer: Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop
NIC: NO INTERNAL NIC! Nic is a pcmcia card: Lynksys pcmpc100 v3
Driver: axnet_cs
distro Mandrake 10
internet connection: Lan (goes through a router to a cable modem.
I believe that devfs is running.



Occasionally, when I have the find new harware service on, it'll find
an eth%d device and ask me to configure it. I've never been able to,
of course. I think this is because somehow, the driver attached to /dev/eth%d and I don't understand that.

Please note, that in the boot up sequence, eth0 is listed as a failed
device if the card is left in. Of course, if I pull it out and insert
it after boot up has passed that point, I get a working network.

Turning off the find new hardware (or auto probe) has no effect during
boot up. If it's off, I don't ever get a network.

Here is what I found when I ran ifconfig:
Ifconfig with working network.

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:04:5A:93:40:9D
inet addr:192.168.0.100 Bcast:192.168.0.255
Mask:255.255.25 5.0
inet6 addr: fe80::204:5aff:fe93:409d/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:974 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:472 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:512959 (500.9 Kb) TX bytes:72590 (70.8 Kb)
Interrupt:3 Base address:0x300

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:223 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:223 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:14916 (14.5 Kb) TX bytes:14916 (14.5 Kb)

Here is ifconfig without working network:

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:60 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:60 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:4028 (3.9 Kb) TX bytes:4028 (3.9 Kb)

Any ideas?

Bump....

Anyone with any ideas about this??

Ah...something like this happened to my laptop...

In my case, it happened to be that the pcmcia service was being started AFTER the network... However, that was some time ago and the auto-detection has come since then with a lot of this...

I guess I don't really know the answer to this, but you might put a script in your rc.local to try again to start the networking if it's not up. It seems like that might work, but it's hard to tell the exact nature of the problem.