i'm trying to get 2 red hat 9 (2.4.20) boxes running and the ethernet cards are giving me a headache. the only card that was set up properly during the install (loaded at startup) was my only pci card. my 2 other cards are isa (both 3c509 but in different machines) and after reading many old howto's i've found, nothing i've tried has worked. how exactly am i supposed to load the modules in and get these cards to work?

What exactely are your error messages (if any) ?

no error messages. doesn't even atempt to load at startup.

currently after messing with all the howto's and tutorials my /etc/modules.conf file reads:

alias eth0 3c509
options 3c509 io=0x300

and the 3c509.o driver is in /lib/modules/2.4.20-8/kernel/drivers/net/

i'm obviously missing something...

still having probs... the card that uses the tulip driver is fine, but the 3c509 is still all messed up

the following setup does nothing with the 3c509:

alias eth0 tulip
alias eth1 3c509

currently my modules.conf file reads:

alias eth0 tulip
alias eth1 3c509
options 3c509 io=0x300 irq=10

whats weird about this setup is the first few times it freaked out and gave me an error message complaining about line 3 and the word option, but after i checked to make sure i spelled it right and restarted, it just stopped complaining, but it still doesn't load the module. i don't think i could have misspelled "options," but then again i did misspell the title of the thread

but if I insmod 3c509 it outputs

eth1: 3c5x9 at 0x300, 10baseT port, address 00 20 af cf 69 d6, IRQ 10

but a lsmod following it says 3c509 is unused. but insmod is the only way I can get it to even get loaded and show up in lsmod

i hope somebody can help me

What is in your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 file? That's the file rh9 loads up on startup (actually it loads up all files in that folder beginning with ifcfg). If there is no ifcfg-eth0 file, create one. Mine:

in my /etc/modules.conf file there is only

I have an intel gigabit ethernet thing that came with my pc.
Good luck.

my ifcfg-eth0 file reads

DEVICE=eth0
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=dhcp

there's no man page on this, what exactly does this file do? should i make a ifcfg-eth1?

Oops, sorry, Yours is on eth1, so is there a file ifcfg-eth1? If not, you should create it, or somehow change your ethernet to be eth0 (I can't quite understand whats going on in your previous post about eth0 and eth1)

This file initializes the networking of the device, which linux automatically runs on bootup. It's kind of self explanatory (i think), but if you need help, reply. and also, type "ifconfig" after editing this file, and post what it says, if you are still having trouble

sorry if the post was confusing, i've got eth0 working great, but my second card isn't working, which if it was would be eth1. there is no ifcfg-eth1. should i copy ifcfg-eth0 to ifcfg-eth1 and change the eth0 inside to eth1? what about the protocol, it won't be using dhcp as it will be the internal interface on my network. or maybe i should copy your ifcfg that you posted for my eth1? and on yours that you posted, what do all those catagories mean like USERCTL and PEERDNS?

Would you then manually code the IP address? then copy mine


DEVICE=eth1
BOOTPROTO=none //for something to do with dhcp
BROADCAST=10.10.10.255 //your broadcast
IPADDR=10.10.20.20 //your ip
NETMASK=255.255.255.0 //your netmask
NETWORK=10.10.20.0 //your network
USERCTL=no //not sure, keep way it is
PEERDNS=no //same as userctl
ONBOOT=yes //hope you can figure this one out
TYPE=Ethernet //yah

see what happens on bootup, when it loads this file, or alternatively, you can type "ifup ifcfg-eth1" which is exactly what command bootup executes. If it doesn't work or do anything, post the results of the ifconfig command. good luck

Did Linux detect your network cards ?
At the command line, type:
Have you tried using the Network Configuration GUI ?
To load it, type redhat-config-network-gui

thanks i got it figured out. i finally got it configured in modules.conf, but because i was missing the ifcfg-eth1 file, it didn't do anything. soooo.... if you find youself missing a "ifcfg-ethx" file, check out http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Firewall-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.3 for what all the options mean.

but i have developed another question but it doesn't quite belong here so i've started a new thread:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=81517

oh and thanks for all your help. i was really frustrated