I've just installed Redhat and Gnome as a gui front end. I'm stuck, how do i get the network card working and connect to my network? I'm very unfamiliar with the enviroment and have looked around but can't find even basic instructions on network connection.

thanks in advance.......

ok... you might want to read thru some of the HowTo's at www.linuxdoc.org on the ethernet howto's.
What kind of ethernet card do you have? Did it detect this during the install if you recall?
In redhat there are several ways to setup a lan or internet connection via ehternet. what kind of network are you on? and what version of redhat did you install?
most you can use netcfg to configure your network, or if you using 7.0 or later you can use Setup from the command line to set it up.
Anything before 7.1 you can use the gui Linuxconf to setup and configure your connection.

let us know of any more details....

I'm running Redhat v6.1, kernal 2.2.12-20 and i have a 3com etherlink III 3c509c.

I'm trying to connect it to a NT server.

I've gone through the HOWTO you surgested and it talks about a DOS configuration Utility to switch off the PnP and to set the card to 10BaseT, what is this DOS Utility?

I've found the initial problem, since on boot up i've not seeing any etho entries thus i assume it's not detecting the card (i've made sure the conf.module file has the 'alias etho 3c509' line).

Hope this makes some sense.....

Most distros come with the configuration tool "linuxconf", which gives you a graphical environment in which you can enter all of your networking info (run it as root). The ins and outs of setting up NICs have been covered here often, so if you run into problems, you might try the Forum Search. Here are some basic, generic pointers to start with, I hope they help:

1. Check the screen output at bootup. If the NIC is being properly initialized, you should see a line that says: "Bringing up eth0- O.K." If you see "failed" or "delaying" instead, you've got problems (see #3).

2. Assuming the NIC comes up, you can do the configuration with the graphical configuration tools linuxconf or netconf. Click on Basic host
information->Adaptor 1. From there, select eth0 as the device, choose your cards module from the drop-down list of kernel modules, and enable the device. Then either choose DHCP (if you're using it), or enter your IP information manually. After that, fill in your DNS and gateway/routing info
under the appropriate sections.

3. If you get a failure on bootup, you may have a resource conflict with another device. Try turning off Plug-N-Play support in your BIOS, it can cause conflicts with some cards.

4. Log in as root, go to the command line or terminal window, and type "cat /proc/pci" and verify that your NIC is being recognized. Type "cat /proc/interrupts" and make sure your NIC's IRQ isn't conflicting with another device. Type "cat /proc/ioports" and check the address ranges for conflicts. If you have resource conflicts, you can try rearranging the slot order of your PCI cards.

5. You can also verify the IRQ/address info by typing "ifconfig". There should be stats for the loopback device (lo) and eth0.

6. If the module isn't loading, try to load it manually by typing "insmod <your_module's_name>" or "modprobe <your_module's_name>". After that,
type "lsmod" to list all loaded modules; yours should show up there.

7. You can then manually configure the NIC by typing "ifconfig eth0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx up", where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is your IP address.

8. Last, type "alias eth0 <your_module's_name>".

cheers for the pointers,

i'm going to get this thing working even if it kills me