On 18/12/07 00:24, Ken Teh wrote:
I have a Linux desktop for which lspci reports as having a realtek
8110/8169. I could not install it via NFS so I popped in a 3COM card
and installed it with SL4.5. After installation, I tried to switch back
to the onboard LAN. I removed the 3com card and modified the network
config by editing/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and
/etc/modprobe.conf. Basically replacing the ifcfg-eth0 with the correct
MAC address and modprobe.conf with the right driver. There is an
r8169.ko in the /lib/modules which I believe is the correct driver
because I used a sysrescuecd image on the box and it correctly detected
the chipset, loaded r8169, and activated the card without any difficulty.
When I try to do an ifup eth0, I get an error message saying that the
device has a different mac address than what was expected and it ignored
my attempt. I'm stumped by this. My understanding may be dated but
as far as I know the information to start the network correctly is in
ifcfg-eth0 and modprobe.conf. I notice that a modprobe r8169 does not
generate any messages in dmesg. So, it could be that r8169 is not the
correct driver. Except for the fact that sysrescuecd used this driver
and it also has a 2.6 kernel.
Can anyone shed any light on this? Thanks
Drivers evolve and add support for new devices. Your sysrescuecd simply
might have a newer version of the driver. Since this is an in-tree
driver, the fact that you cannot install SL45 over it is a good
indication that it won't be useful later either (unless your
installation puts an updated kernel on the disk that now has an updated
driver).
To verify:
try "lspci", identify your network card slot (e.g. '01:0d.0'). Run
"lspci -vvn -s 01:0d.0". This gives the PCI Id in numeric form (01:0d.0
Class 0280: MAJOR MINOR..)
Then run "modinfo r8169". This will give a list of PCI IDs (major and
minor ID concatenated into one big hex number) this driver feels
responsible for. If your card isn't in there, the driver will ignore it.
If it is there, the driver still may look at the "Subsystem" ID and
decide it cannot handle that flavour of the card - unfortunately there
you would need to look into the driver source code to make sure.
The "modinfo" command is something you can run both on SL4 and inside
the rescue CD, just to see the differences.
With the PCI ID, you can the start Googling for which exact version of
the driver added support for your card.. or for other drivers that also
might be able to support this.
best regards
Jan
