I can load 8211.o if I cd to the folder where I "made" it originally and do "insmod".
I have inserted "alias eth1 8211.o" into modules.conf but the driver doesnt load at boot.

8211.o is a wireless driver for eth1

eth0 and eth1 are both shown during bootup but only eth0 "loads" OK. Eth1 "fails"

I've seen a post about rc.d but they were talking about slack.

Do I need to put 8211.o somewhere special so modules.conf can find it?

Any help greatly appreciated

Try copying the 8211.o file to /lib/modules/<kernel version>/kernel/drivers/net
then do a "/sbin/depmod -a"
then put
alias eth1 8211
in modules.conf

Thanks Demonbane.

This is how I copied the 8211.o driver to /lib/modules/2.4.22-10mdk/kernel/drivers/net :

[root@localhost teabear]# cp /tmp/ADM8211/8211.o /lib/modules/2.4.22-10mdk/kernel/drivers/net

Then I did depmod like so :
[root@localhost teabear]# /sbin/depmod -a
And got the output :
depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in /lib/modules/2.4.22-10mdk/kernel/drivers/net/8211.o

The driver still doesnt load at boot.
I look in /<path>/net and 8211.o is there.
I notice everything else in "/net" has a .gz ? Is 8211.o supposed to be zipped or something?

I have found some old posts that appear similar to my situation. The most to the point of the posts I found follows :

Quote:

Thanks to your help, I can load the "8211" module before the system "Bringing up the interface eth0" now.

I did so by adding a file called "ADMtek" in the /etc/rc.d/init.d with the mere statement

insmod -f /lib/modules/2.4.20-18.7/kernel/drivers/net/pcmcia/8211.o

and then created a soft link "S09ADMtek" in the /etc/rc.d/rc3.d that points to the "ADMtek" file. Certainly, I had to "chmod 'a+x' ADMtek" to make it a executable file. Now I have internet access as soon as a log in as any user.

End Quote.

I also found more than one reference to "unresolved symbols" warning, after copying 8211.o to /<path>/net and then doing depmod-a. The posts said 8211.o still works even when the "unresolved symbols" warning comes out of depmod-a.

What else might I try to get driver to load at boot?

Help is greatly appreciated!

hmm if invoking
/sbin/insmod -f /lib/modules/2.4.22-10mdk/kernel/drivers/net/8211.o
works for you, I suppose you can do what he did as well, make a file which contains just the above command, make it executable, then make a symlink to your runlevel directory
(probably /etc/rc.d/rcX.d for Mandrake, can't remember on top of my head), do it for runlevel 3,4, and 5. The runlevel scripts run in ascending number order with regard to their name so make sure you name the symlink something like S008211.

Very exellent Demonbane,

It now loads at boot. The only different thing about it is during boot a new line comes up with all the rest - "starting admtek" followed by "OK" (great!) then two lines later the normal "starting eth1" comes up and pauses for a few seconds then outputs the error msg " sorry, another instance of eth1 is already loaded" ( or words to that effect ) then everything moves on fine.

Not a problem at the moment, I dont want to take the time right now to try to correct that because I'm in a rush to get wireless configured and "up and running"

Not that it would really be a problem anyway, its just that later on, when I have time I want to start taking measures to cause the quickest boot I can.

Extreme thanks to you Demonbane.

Continued gratitude to all those who help us newbies