Installing NIC

msfluffy · 12-05-2005, 10:19 AM

I have a new computer - Gateway 4500 - that I have Slackware 8 running on. The NIC is onboard and I can not get Linux to see it. I have downloaded the drivers - bcm5700 from Broadcom and done what the README.TXT said to do. When I do lspci, it shows Boradcom as unknown, and when I start up Linux, it tells me "SOIADDRT: Network is unreachable". I don't even know if this version of Linux supports that NIC. Help! Thanks

bathory · 12-06-2005, 03:29 AM

Run

Code:

lsmod

to see if the module (driver) of your nic is loaded in the kernel. If not

Code:

modprobe <driver name>

Then run

Code:

dmesg

to see if there are any errors. If you get no errors then use Slack tool to configure your networks. If there are any errors post here to help you further.

msfluffy · 12-07-2005, 08:29 AM

Yes, it is loading - at least when I do it manually. When I reboot the module is not loaded. But I have a question about the "Slack tool" you referred to. I have pkgtool, but when I run it I just get dumped back to the command prompt, like there aren't any packages to install. Thanks

bathory · 12-07-2005, 08:43 AM

I mean to use

Code:

netconfig

msfluffy · 12-07-2005, 09:07 AM

Ok, I did that. Then I did ifconfig -a and get back for eth0 the MAC address, RX and TX both reporting 0 packets sent and received. When I reboot, the module doesn't load itself.

bathory · 12-07-2005, 09:22 AM

To load the module at startup add a line in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules

Code:

/sbin/modprobe <module-name>

Does ifconfig shows the IP you gave your nic and the netmask? Can you ping your gateway?

msfluffy · 12-07-2005, 09:35 AM

Ok I'll put the module in that conf file, thanks for that. But I'm beginning to think I've got the wrong drivers because the ifconfig doesn't show the IP, subnet or gateway that I put in netconfig. I'm so frustrated. I went back to the Gateway site, looked again on the specs page and according to them I have a BCM5752 nic, I'm using BCM5700 drivers. But unless you can think of some other reason why the OS doesn't see the nic, I'm going to the web site for the motherboard and see what they say is the nic. What do you think? And does Slackware 9.1 support gig and SATA drives?

msfluffy · 12-07-2005, 09:37 AM

Oh - forgot to tell you that I can't ping gateway. Says network is unreachable. When the system boots up I see a line that says SIOADDRT: Network is unreachable. Does that give you a clue?

bathory · 12-08-2005, 02:51 AM

I see now that you use Slack 8 which is rather old. What is your kernel version? Because the bcm driver is tested for kernels 2.4.x up to 2.6.x and I think that Slack 8 comes with a 2.2.x kernel. Try to install the latest Slack 10.2, or if you cannot do this try to upgrade your kernel to at least 2.4.31.
Meanwhile if the module loads with no errors (run "dmesg" to see if there are any) you can try to configure your nic manually to see if it works:

Code:

ifconfig eth0 xx.xx.xx.xx netmask 255.yy.yy.yy up
route add default gw zz.zz.zz.zz

msfluffy · 12-08-2005, 06:28 AM

Ok bathory, I will try the manual config. And I did say at first I was running 8x, but it's 9.1 kernel is 2.4.22.