[vox-tech] ethernet card setup

[ME]

David Siedband said:
> I'm installing an ethernet card in machine running Debian (woody)
>
> here's the output from      #lspci -v
>
> 01:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Lite-on Communications Inc LNE100TX (rev20)
>          Subsystem: Kingston Technologies: Unknown device f002
>          Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 3
>          I/O ports at d800 [size=256]
>          Memory at fc9ec00 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
>          Expansion ROM at fc980000 [disabled] [size=256]
>
> (btw, none of the other devices listed had IRQ3)
> This card uses the tulip.o driver, which I found in
> /lib/modules/2.4.18-bf2.4/kernel/drivers/net/tulip/

Does this box have any old fashioned serial ports? (You know, the 9-pin
variety?) IRQ3 and IRQ4 are often reserved by for /dev/ttyS1 and
/dev/ttyS0 respectively.

Do you have serial module loaded?
If so, cat /proc/interrupts and see if 3 and 4 are in use. The kernel only
shows interrupts in .proc/interrupts for hardware that is recognizes. If
you have serial ports, but serial support is not loaded, you wont see ther
int in use.

> from there I do
> insmod tulip.o
>
> and it then shows up in lsmod
> tulip          37184     0      (unused)

It is better to use modprobe than it is to use insmod.

modprobe may provide more help to you in the way of an error message.

The whole point of depmod is for dependencies. insmod should be avoided 
and only considered when modprobe fails.

> I also added the following to the file in /etc/modutils/aliases (so it
> goes into /etc/modules.conf)
> alias        eth0                      tulip
>
> I do
> depmod -a
>
> and try to initialize the eth0 adapter
> ifup eth0
> I get:
> Ignoring unknown interface eth0=eth0
>
> Any suggestions?

Yeah, you should be able to do
# ifconfig eth0
and see that work before trying # ifup eth0
Of course, at this point, # ifconfig eth0 will fail too.

Anyway...
There is a new kernel out
(last week or week before?) 2.4.21
It has more support for mort stuff and included several ethernet cards not
supported in 2.4.20. You are still on 2.4.18.

Also, the tulip driver is one that continues to change and evolve over
time. Unlike other drivers, the tulip driver for the tulip chipset changes
as vendors who choose to use the tulip chipset have variations on how they
use it and the interfaces they expect the OS to use, etc.

The first thing I would try is a new kernel, or at least check the changes
in the new kernels since 4.18 to see if they have altered the tulip code.

After doing some searches, it looks that many people had problems with
that card in 1999.

See if there is anything logged to syslog or messages abut the same time
as you modprobe. See if altering the args that can be passed to it on
modprobing the module help to get it recognized. (Specify IRQ, ioport,
etc)

-ME