This question is concerning Solaris:

I just installed Solaris on an intel workstation (it also triple-boots with Windows 2000 Pro and Mandrake 8.2). This workstation is connected to a Windows 2000 box that is directly connected to the internet via Direct TV DSL ethernet. On the Windows 2000 box I also run another nic that connects to the machine with Solaris.

Here is the problem. All of my nic's are Realtek8139(A) cards. I can use them with Windows, Mandrake and have even used them with FreeBSD. After first looking at the HCL for Solaris I noticed that these cards were not supported and then later saw that with the correct drivers installed that Solaris would support it.

I copied the driver.zip from my Windows partition, unzipped it and ran ./lnstall. The drivers were installed per the output message. I created the empty files that needed to be created and then ran sys-unconfig and rebooted. This, of course, brought up the re-set screen upon bootup. I configured the now rtls0 interface as:

Networked: Yes
DHCP: Yes
IPV6: No

Then it went about the business of trying to find a dhcp server (which i do indeed have on the Windows box). It must have searched for about 15 minutes (that's a long time) and then stated that a dhcp could not be found on the lan.

I thought maybe the system had configured the interface but in actuality it may not have detected the device. That was wrong... I did ifconfig -a and the rtls0 interface did indeed show the correct mac (hardware) address, so I know for a fact that solaris did "see" and configure the device.

I went ahead and tried a static set up for the device at 192.168.0.2 (under subnet of 255.255.255.0 with my server being 192.168.0.1). I tried a ping at 192.168.0.1 and got nothing.

I have heard of people saying that Realtek8139 and a lot of nic cards in general just dont work with solaris no matter what. Before you ask I have checked the physical connection several times, like I said, when I boot into windows or mandrake everything including internet access works fine as the interface is configured with dhcp.

Is there anything that I am missing? or Should I just go out and get a 3com card (a lot of people are telling me that). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sounds like a driver issue to me.

Can you ping 127.0.0.1 or 192.168.0.2 from solaris? Does ifconfig show the interface as up?

I would get a new card regardless. Realtek nics are generally crap (screwy chipsets and subpar quality). Good nics are cheap these days.

I have to say I am inclined to agree with you on the driver aspect. Yes I can ping lo and 192.168.0.2, so I know the local interface is there, its just not seeing the rest of the network...

I have to agree. The realtek chipsets are definately cheap, but you really get what you pay for in terms of packet errors and extremely hard-to-diagnose network errors. throw in another nic.

Actually this post should have been in the Networking forum. But the situation that I have read would require more info. 1)DHCP enabled and could not locate server? humm What is the DHCP server. Can you check the acks on the server? see if it broadcasted anything. 2)static addressing- did you put a reservation for that ip address on the DHCP server. Then this will notify the local network that card exisits.
And why didnt you try IPv6? win2K uses it. Actually I hope you tried a bit harder to resolve this because this requires you (if you changed the NIC) to configure the other OS's on the box as well.

why try ipv6?

Hi! Im new to solaris. But a few days ago i got into linux. Regardless, im still a newbie. All of a sudden im faced with networking a Solaris ultrasparc machine with a win NT or it could be with a win2000 machine in the end (both nt technology). ANyway, the only networking which needs to be done is that the solaris machine should be able to see a folder on the win machine in order to save jpg files. The solaris machine has a proprietary program that takes images and saves them to a local drive. All i would need to do is have it see the win machine as a separate drive.

First, im wondering if its just as easy as sharing a folder on the win machine and having to do a little configuring in the solaris machine. And second, im guessing it might have something to do with mounting the win machine's drive as a drive in the sparc machine. This is as far as ive come so far, conceptualizing the problem. Can anyone help me out?

well, according to sunfreeware.com, for solaris on intel, there is samba, and that will allow for you to share and see shared files from solaris with the rest of the network. here is the link for solaris 8 for intel. ftp://ftp.sunfreeware.com/pub/freewa...intel-local.gz
although since you have a triple boot going on there, maybe this program could be useful for you somehow, http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~steven/lxrun/ this allows for you to run linux programs on solaris x86.