i have tried for hours to get my fa311 card working. i think i finally got it recognized using the natsemi.c files, however, now i can not get the card to obtain an IP address and if i manually specifiy an IP it wont ping any of the other machines on my network. is there something else i have to do after i get the module installed in order for the card to work on my network? it tries using DHCPCD to obtain an IP for about 30 seconds then it just says FAILED. any help would be greatly appreciated. btw im using mandrake 7.2 with kernel 2.2.17-21.

thanks

Do you have a DHCP server? If not then you need to set the ip manually with ifconfig.

yes. i am using windows 2000's internet connection sharing which does have built in DHCP. i also have 1 other pc and 2 macs all of which are obtaining IP's just fine from the win2k machine.

thanks

i forgot to mention that i have tried manually specifying an IP address and that does not work either. i am not able to ping my win2k server and the win2k server can not ping my linux box.

well i figured it out. it was actually pretty easy heh.. if you use mandrake (7.2 anyways) just download the fa311 drivers from netgear and then type:

gcc -D__KERNEL__ -DMODULE -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O -m486 -c -I/usr/src/linux/include fa311.c

then copy the fa311.o file to /lib/modules/(kernelversion)/net

then run depmod -a

then run modprobe fa311

then i ran netconf and set up my eth0 for what i needed and it worked. i dont know if this is all required or if i did everything correctly, but it works.

- don papadapolis

I am now, at this minute, feeling your frustration with the FA311 card.....I'm gonna try your procedure


keep your fingers crossed...mine are

Ok, well, I have taken the "coward's" approach to resolving this problem with Mandrake 7.0 not wanting 2 accept this resemblance of an NIC called Fa311...

After I left work today, "Which encompasses Speaking Serbo-Croatian for about 6 straight hours", I was too beat-down and fed up to come home and "Arm Wrestle the Penguin".

So I purchased a new NIC.....D-LINK DFE-530TX

now I had it working after only about 5 minutes...which includes installation, and Configuration.

I PINGed local host (my Linux box) and all was good.
Then I tried to PING my Windows 98 Box (which is properly configured) and my Linux FROZE!

Every since then I have not been able 2 get it 2 work!

If anyone has ever used this NIC on their Linux network, and made it operate correctly, PLEASE RESPOND!!!!


p.s. I am running a 4-port NETGEAR HUB and The NIC on my Win 98 box is an Fa311.

yours truly,

Punked out by a Penguin

OK.....Disregard last transmission (posting)

I have it working now, I'm not really sure how I did it, but I can ping from my LINUX box, and I can ping from my WINSUCK box.

I am happy, 4 now.

Lets C what I can screw up now.......

(to be continued)

I am a newbie who has just installed Mandrake 7.2 for the first time. I followed some other threads, and have successfully built and installed the natsemi.o and pci-scan.o modules needed for my Netgear FA311 ethernet card. I think my ethernet connection to the hub is working, but I can't figure out how to get my DSL connection (from the hub) to work with the outside world.

My ethernet hardware setup is as follows: Netgear ethernet hub, desktop PC (dual-booting Windows 9.x and Mandrake Linux 7.2) connected to the hub via the FA311 ethernet card, laptop PC (running Windows 9.x) connected to the ethernet hub, yada yada, and the Cisco 675 DSL modem is also connected to the ethernet hub. The DSL connection with my ISP (qwest/uswest) is via PPP, and DHCP is used to obtain an IP address.

This hardware setup works perfectly when Windows 9.x is booted on the desktop PC. When I boot Linux on that machine instead, I think eth0 is working properly, but I can't figure out how to get to the outside world (i.e., to my ISP). If I do "ifconfig eth0 10.0.0.3 up", then I can successfully ping 10.0.0.1 (is this the DSL modem?), and 10.0.0.2 (the laptop). So, I think the natsemi driver is working, yes? Is there a better way to verify this?

However, if I try to ping my ISP (206.81.192.1 or 204.147.80.5), I get "Network is unreachable" with a ret code of -1. Obviously, there is some sort of configuration that I need to do and haven't. Do I need to configure TCP/IP, DHCP, and/or something else? Is that what netconf is for? I looked at netconf, but it seemed to want me to specify a lot of info that I either don't have or don't understand, info that wasn't required to get things working on Windows 9.x. Is the solution DrakNet, the configuration tool that ran at install time? It doesn't allow me to select the natsemi driver; is there a way to tell it that a new ethernet driver should be added to the list, now that I've built natsemi?

Thanks in advance for any pointers you can provide to information that will help a newbie get up-to-speed on this configuration issue.

[A day later...] Well, never mind, I finally got things working by using linuxconf. There is an excellent article on this called "Setting up a Local Area Network," by Darrick Addison, out on IBM's developerWorks site (IBM:developerWorks:Linux:Linux articles). I got to it via a link on LinuxNewbie.org. I'm not deleting this post, even though I've answered my own question, because I thought others might run into the same problem I did...

[Edited by Lee Smith on 02-25-2001 at 08:17 PM]