Dear All,

I have this weird problem. I think its network card related .. I don't know if I should post this in the hardware section.

I have a Fedora Core 5 machine with 2 ethernet cards, which I manage remotely, one of which is built-in to the motherboard - its a Broadcom 5751 Gigabit and one I added recently to make it a router/firewall (Realtek) for my LAN.

Additionally, I have connected the Broadcom to a wireless access point that my ISP here in Nepal have provided me for Internet.

Now my problem is that when my machine restarts ... it somehow fails to connect to the access point (no internet).

My support staff have devised a unique method to restore the connection after the reboot:
1. Plug out the network card and connect it to a laptop or any other machine running windows.
2. Reconnect it to the machine in question.

These activities somehow restore the connection and everything works fine.

This has baffled me since two weeks. Can anyone tell me what is happening here ?

I checked with ethtool etc and they are showing me normal results for autonegotiation etc.

I notice during reboot that kudzu is showing some errors, is it related ?
Or should I bind the ethernet cards to its respective mac addresses ? Am I missing out anything ?

I know it isn't firewall ... because after the above-mentioned activities ... things work OK and as expected.

Any helps, hints will be most appreciated.

Thanks and regards,
Zapp

How about posting the errors to this thread?

I cannot recall the exact details of what I have read on this, but you are not alone.
There are a number of threads here on LQ from users who have the exact same problem with a particular ethernet device (the Broadcom?): The machine needs to be rebooted into Windows to reset the ethernet device, and then rebooted into Linux again.
I suspect there is something in the firmware (a register or whatever) of the device, that the manufacturer has shared with Micro$oft, but has not shared with Linux developers, that enables Windoze to properly reset the device, while Linux developers have not yet been able to figure out.

Do some searching here on LQ, and also using Google, and odds are you will find many of the threads I refer to, and maybe even someone has figured out a workaround.
Also, depending on what driver you are using for the device, perhaps using the Windoze driver, wrapped with NDISwrapper, would workaround the issue too, though I cannot confirm or test this, as I do not have a Broadcom device.

Good luck!

Sasha