I have managed to solve the problem of getting my FA311 Netgear ethernet card and dhcpcd to work with mandrake.

Before I ask my question I would like to help newbies like myself.......

To get your NIC card Netgear FA311, especially those blueyonder chappies from the the uk, working on a linux system i have found this solution( a week of f***ing booting between windows and linux!!!)

You must have dhcpcd on your hard drive if not you have to find it on you cd and install the package. To install type the following.....(all one line)

rpm -ivh /mnt/cdrom/Mandrake/RPMS/dhcpcd-1.3.18pl5-2mdk.i586.rpm

The pathname and file name will probably be different just substitute yours. But it'll be roughly the same

you also need to get some drivers this comes from www.sycld.com you need to download netdrivers-3.0.1.rpm.src. Download this to a floppy disk. Because of Windows the filename gets altered. You need to make a note of the filename before you download and once downloaded rename(using the mv command) it to the original name....
for example...
cd /mnt/floppy/
mv netdrivers-3_0_1_rpm.src netdrivers-3.0.1.rpm.src

now follow this
mkdir /usr/share/spec-helper/
touch /usr/share/spec-helper/spec-helper
chmod +x /usr/share/spec-helper/spec-helper

you then need to install netdrivers-3.0.1.rpm.src from the floppy using....(for example)
rpm -ivh /mnt/floppy/netdrivers-3.0.1.rpm.src
then...
cd /usr/src/RPM/SPEC/
rpm -ba netdrivers.spec

All is done. You can initialize your modules by following the steps below(You will probably need to change your kernel path (the 2.2.15-4mdk bit))

Now for my question......!!

to initialize my card I have to manually type

insmod /usr/tmp/netdrivers-3.0-root/lib/modules/2.2.15-4mdk/net/pci-scan.o
insmod /usr/tmp/netdrivers-3.0-root/lib/modules/2.2.15-4mdk/net/natsemi.o
dhcpcd

then i can connect thru my NIC and cable to Netscape.

How can i get this done thru boot up????????

I know with mandrake there are about half a dozen ways your 'supposed' to do it, but really that's just a big fat lie. I hate Linuxconf. Here's one that's cheap and dirty:

Edit /etc/rc.d/rc.local and add those three lines fromAlthough really, you should copy the drivers to /lib/modules/2.2.15-mdk/net, then all it will take is:

/sbin/insmod pci-scan
/sbin/insmod natsemi
/sbin/dhcpcd

Regardless of this being quick and dirty, its always best to refer to commands run by scripts with their full path. (no, you don't need the .o's when your insmodding from the default kernel module directory... it'll confuse insmod)

Remember that if your machine is not hooked up to its network for some reason like bluesky has gone bonkers, or your cat pulled the cat-5 out of the NIC, then it will seem like your machine has hung on its last stage of boot when really its spending (I think exactly 90 seconds, maybe 120), a while trying to find that dhcp server. Give it a minute, make coffee, plug in the cat-5, flush the cat, or just kick back and wait for it to time out.

Cheers,

Finegan

Cheers Finegan,

I will transfer files like you said, have added lines to rc.local.. boots up lovely.

Was so happy that i connected didn't even think of trying to make things simple!!!!

thanks