cant find onboard NIC
Submitted by mvsystems on Sat, 11/10/2007 - 1:19pm.
This is a new one for me and I'm very very short of being a Linux guru. Just loaded up a box and all went fine but the nic card is not being recognized. I double check and it's enabled in the bios. I don't kow the procedure on how to find a linux driver and load it like you woudl a Windows machine.
Many Thanks
Additional network info needed
Sat, 11/10/2007 - 2:28pm
You failed to mention who made the network card. Is CentOS not recognizing the card on boot or is it just not initializing on startup? Take a look in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts and see if there is a file for if-eth0. If there is you can modifiy the file for you TCP settings.
Linux != Windows for driver installations. If you can bring the interface up using DHCP on boot you could always load Webmin and configure the interface for a static IP.
The command to display your settings is almost like that in Windows. In windows you issue ipconfig /all from a command prompt. From Linux issue the command ifconfig.
Configure NIC eth0
Sat, 11/10/2007 - 4:20pm
You haven't said which mobo you are using or what driver the nic needs. If it is a gigabit nic there have been a number of threads about these not being recognised by Centos. Once you have sorted out which driver the nic needs you can see if its loaded at bootup. The linux command:
lsmod
lists the loaded modules. On my system I have 3com nic, so lsmod gives me a line
3c59x 39293 0
showing that the 3com dirver has been loaded. On trixbox 2.0 the network driver modules are located in:
/lib/modules/2.6.9-34.0.2.EL/kernel/drivers/net
the driver my system needs '3c59x.ko' is located there. This is loaded at boot time as a result of this line in /etc/modprobe.conf.
alias eth0 3c59x
the 2.6.9-34..... etc above needs to match the kernel version that was booted as the machine started up.
This reference, courtesy of google, describes how you would load a new module that was not loaded at boot time.
http://www.linuxheadquarters.com/howto/networking/networkconfig.s...
eth0 is set / configured by /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
It always helps to have a knoppix disc around so you can boot the system with knoppix and see what it makes of the nic and you can then check which driver is loaded.
Centos driver for Intel D945GCNL / Realtek RTL8111B
Tue, 11/13/2007 - 2:38am
I think your problem can be solved but will involve a bit of work. A few minutes googling has thrown up the following:
The centos wiki here http://wiki.centos.org/HardwareList/RealTekRTL8111b states that drivers for this NIC are not included in the standard Centos 4.5 or 5.0. The page gives a link to the Realtek website where you can d/l the driver source code for the 2.6 kernel.
This Suse forum thread http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/index.php?showtopic=36365 also takes you through the process of downloading the source and building the driver it. The driver download also has a readme file that gives you instructions for making the driver, so you should be OK.
You probably need to initially stick another 10/100 NIC in that is recognised so that you have a working network connection so that your can d/l the file etc. If you can build and load a new driver then you can remove this NIC.
A search of these trix forums also shows that someone else has succeeded with this mobo / nic combo, but the thread is long and a bit confused but its worth reading.
Good luck hth.
FWIW, get an intel nic and
Mon, 11/12/2007 - 5:37pm
FWIW, get an intel nic and be done with the problem. Intel nics use less cpu time anyway.
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