Just a note:
I use RHL 6.0 and it autodetects my FA311 using the tulip module. Everything has worked fine with this module for over a year and a half

HTH

D Tinser

FNJ Mancini,

Sorry, my fault for posting while not at my linux boxes- eth0 does not show up as a device in the /dev directory of either of my computers, even though the NICs in both are working perfectly. I guess I just assumed that eth0 should be a device listed under /dev, but apparently not.
I think I'll just take this moment to retire to a dark corner, admit my Newbieness, insert my foot in my mouth, and begin to chew vigorously.

Tinman,
Are you sure you're not refering to the FA-310TX? The 310TX was well supported in older versions, but when I installed Redhat 6.2, it didn't have built-in suport for my FA-311. I know the FA-310TX used tulip, but since the FA-311 switched to a National Semicondutor chipset, I thought it needed the newer natsemi driver.

No, they're FA311's, I've got 6 of them, 2 in my Linux gateway, and 1 each in 4 various versions of Winblows.

I agree however, I believe quite a few of the drivers got changed, along with quite a few libs, modules, objects, ect., in the change from 6.0 to 6.2.

However, the tulip driver works fine for both of the FA311's (I checked again, just to make sure) in the Linux box.

D Tinser

Hmm, interesting. The driver change I was talking about (tulip-->natsemi) wouldn't have had any thing to do specifically with a given version of Linux distro, except for the fact that Netgear changed the chipset on their cards when they moved to the 311, and at the time the available kernels didn't even know about the 311's National Semi chipset. Redhat 6.2 was my first Linux install, and I had a bear of a time getting the 311 to work with it. It never did work with the tulip.o module (as provided in RH 6.2), nor did it work with the module provided by Netgear. Before I got it to work, I had to go through a long song-and-dance procedure of getting the source from scyld, trying to compile, figuring out which crucial instruction they omitted, recompiling, etc. Granted, that was serious "Newbie era" for me, so I might have been making some obvious mistakes. Still- given the number of FA-311 related problems I've seen posted on different boards, do you think that suggesting the tulip driver would be a valid troubleshooting tip ?

As far as RHL 6.0, 2.2.5, yes.

Also, I feel I should note this:

My Linux box is a conglomeration of some fairly unpopular hardware (in otherwords, cheap), with the apparent exception of the NIC, and this distro is the ONLY distro of Linux that has run stabily on this box, to include newer versions of RedHat. It's also the media edition (came in the RedHat 6 Unleashed book), so maybe it's further from standard still. Whatever the reason, it works where even debian is unstable.

As far as the distro having anything to do with the driver functioning or not, I really don't know. My version of RedHat is the only one I've cared to use over any significant period of time, and tulip drives my cards, be they the wrong drivers or not, well beyond my best hopes. The only NIC I did have a problem with in this box was a LinkSys card... but that's a whole other story

D Tinser

Dear DMR :

I went to D-Link's web site and found information on what module to use for each of their adapters. In my case (a DE-220) they recommend the module "ne". In case anyone would be interested, the URL is

I rebuilt the kernel to make sure that all relevant modules are included, re-booted and re-made the network configuration with netconf. I got an error log saying, between other things, "trying to mount /dev/pts... devpts not supported by kernel"; what is this "pts" ? The same log says that this time it was able to brin!!g up /dev/eth0, but a ping to my own PC results in the message "Network unreachable"...

What's more, as I shut down the PC, I saw the message "no card found at i/o=0x12c", which is the address I set in netconf.

I am thinking of the following things :
- unsetting PnP OS in the setup;
- leaving blank netconf's IRQ and address settings.