I'm sure no one else out there as dumb as me but...

I had problems with a Slackware 9 install and my network card. The system successfully loaded the ethernet drivers but when the boot proccess was over the card was always down and had to be activated manually (ifconfig eth0 up).

What was happening was the script that sets up eth0 (rc.inet1 for Slackware) was running *before* the drivers for the card were loaded. I forgot to modify the script that loads required modules (rc.modules in Slackware) and the card drivers were being loaded only at the end of the boot process by the hotplugging script. As hotplugging detection stuff happens after rc.inet1 - it meant the card never got activated.

I've modified rc.modules and all is well now. I'm thinking about removing the hotplugging function so that I have responsibility for making sure device drivers are loaded.

ps. IMHO Slackware 9 is very impressive and I am finding myself much keener to mess around with the guts of the OS than previous experience with SuSE distributions.

cheers.