NIC Driver for NVidia NForce onboard NIC.
 

First I would like to thank you all in advance for any help. Alright so first off I recently upgraded my server and here are its specs:

2500+ AthlonXP
512MB PC3200 DDR 2x 256MB
ABIT NF7-S 2.0 BIOS rev #24
Highpoint 1540 4x SATA ports
2x 160GB SATA
2x 200GB SATA
1x Onboard LAN (not sure what brand but it’s the integrated NForce offering so I assume the NVidia NIC)
2x Linksys LNE100TX
GeForceMX440 AGP

Alright first off I am running Gentoo Linux with kernel 2.6 and I can’t figure out how to install the driver for the onboard nic. I should mention xwindows doesn’t work because it was configured for my old gfx card. So don’t bother recommending things to fix thru the GUI. So I also don’t know how to get the other two NICs installed. A lot of services are failing at boot but I am almost positive its because of their dependency on the NIC.

Thanks again any help is appreciated.

It should come with the 2.6 kernels. It's called forcedeth and it's a reverse-engineered driver. There's also one you can get from www.nvidia.com but it's not as good. The nvidia people even helped out with the forcedeth driver at one point because they realized it was better than their's. Also you can go to www.nvnews.net... they have a great forum for people with nForce motherboards.

What you want is the

forcedeth.c: Reverse Engineered nForce ethernet driver. Version 0.25.

to enable the onboard nic. check your logs, and/or dmesg for it. It is part of the 2.6 kernel.

The link you provided is dead the nvnews link.

http://www.nvnews.net/

Okay I can't find Forcedeth anywhere on my HDD. Where is it supposed to be located?

Its a kernel module. Either compiled in, or it may be separate under /lib/modules/2.6.xxx/

The xxx will be replaced by the end of the kernel version and any additional flags. Their are subdirectories under this where it maybe lurking. mine is

/lib/modules/2.6.7/kernel/drivers/net

you have to insert the module into the kernel, try

modprobe forcedeth

To make it permanant is more dependant on your distros way of doing it. ( I can't remember how to do it with Gentoo ).

Okay I'm currently working on getting the NIC drivier installed and now the processes are still ahbving problems I am listing the specific ones so that you have an idea of what these might be doing to the system to cause problems.

Netmount
Proftpd
SSHD
Samba <- I know the system is not dependant on this one :-)

I have a similiar issue. How would I go about installing this forcedeth? I've tried the nVidia official drivers and they do not work.

Yeah I still haven't resolved my problem either. Saturninus I emailed you with my email address please send me an email if you get this figured out it would be great.

Forcedeth comes with the kernel. You have to build a custom kernel and compile it in.

I'm having a problem forcing the death of forcedeth. I also have an NF7(-M) board. Generally, it's working fine but I cannot configure the integrated NIC so that it will work. Suseplugger device manager shows the card as available but not configured.

I tried installing the nVidia drivers but Linux still tries to use forcedeth to operate the NIC no matter how many times I delete it from the YaST dialogue and add nvnet. I have tried forcing a change of driver with "modprobe -r -i forcedeth" followed by "modprobe nvnet" before re-configuring the card, but I still get the same details showing in device manager and can neither access the computer nor even get a ping response.

Does anyone know of a solution to this, or should I try another NIC??