I am attempting to install a RealTek 8139 based PCI Ethernet card on an old PC under RH 9.0 (2.4.20-6), and have met with hours of frustration, even after reading howtos and all documentation.

When system boots with entry in /etc/modules.config:

alias eth0 8139too

the system hangs up, completely unresponsive, at the point where eth0 is initialized. The only way I can get around this is to power down, remove the PCI card, reboot and then change/remove the modules.config entry. Running either

modprobe eth0 or
ifup eth0

with the 8139too driver specified as above also results in system hang with no way to recover the system. Once this happens, I have no recourse but to power down and start again.

When I try to use the older driver, also included in /lib/modules/2*/kernel/drivers/net

alias eth0 8193cp

I get a message at boot time,when eth0 intialized, " 8139cp device does not seem to be present". Running

ifup eth0 results in "pci dev 00:0f.0 (id 10ec:8139 rev 10) is not an 8139C+ compatible chip. 8139cp: try driver 8139too instead"

I have tried the following fixes, found in various howtos and threads, but no improvement:

- switched PCI slots
- turned off PlugNPlay in BIOS

running lspci gives output:

00.0f.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek ... RTL8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev10)

Finally, the CD that came with the NIC has an old driver rtl8139.c, but of course I do not have gcc installed on this machine and I cannot compile it or figure out how to install gcc and related environment.

Any suggestions appreciated. I am a linux newbie, struggling to make progress.

That same card has been my personal nightmare for some time.

Solution on my machine : pass a "noapic" option on boot.

thank you. I assume I use the 8139too driver, correct? And I just enter option noapic at the boot prompt?

That's what I did...