RH 8.0, eth0 "Inactive"
Tuang
this problem.
I installed Red Hat 8.0, fired it up, opened Mozilla, and found that I
had no network connection. Mozilla can't find anything ("www.yahoo.com
could not be found", so no DNS, I assume), and ping'ing Yahoo from the
command line gives me "unknown host" (also no DNS).
This machine has a 3Com ethernet card directly cabled to a Linksys
4-port router that is connectd to a cable modem. One of the other four
ports on the router leads to a WiFi access point that successfully
serves two Windows laptops in the house. DHCP works fine for them, as
does the automatically provided DNS. (In my Windows network setup, I
told it to get IP address and DNS automatically, and it did.) I'm
having no trouble connecting to the Internet from these laptops. (I'm
writing this on one of them.)
I found the Gnome "Network Configuration" dialog box, and it says my
"eth0" is "Inactive". Clicking the "Activate" button returns the
not-very-helpful "Cannot activate network device eth0". There's a
"Help" button at the bottom of the dialog box that brings up a help
browser. Clicking the "Establishing an Ethernet Connection" link locks
up the browser. I can't even close it without a "kill the process"
force quit.
In the Network Configuration dialog, there is a "Hardware" tab. That
shows me my 3Com adapter, but IRQ: says "Unknown". That sounds like a
promising lead, but I don't know what to do about it. I don't know
which one to give it, don't know how to even figure that out, and I
don't know why it doesn't already have one. (This machine was formerly
a Windows box on a big LAN, and networking worked fine.)
I've used Google to find the exact text of some of these errors, but I
haven't found anything that has helped.
I'd be grateful for any suggestions of where to look next. I don't
have a clue what utilities I should be using, where I should look for
what info, etc.
Thanks.
petri timonen
> This machine has a 3Com ethernet card directly cabled to a Linksys
i have had 3 3com's and i haven't succeed with anyone of them...
Michael Buchenrieder
[...]
>In the Network Configuration dialog, there is a "Hardware" tab. That
>shows me my 3Com adapter, but IRQ: says "Unknown". That sounds like a
>promising lead,
It is.
>but I don't know what to do about it.
[...]
Assuming that you're using a PCI NIC, you'll have to reboot
the machine, enter the system's CMOS and then set the option
"PNP OS" to "disabled". For unknown reasons, manufacturers have
decided that by setting this option to "yes/enabled", the BIOS should
now refrain from auto-assigning IRQs to PCI devices, which is just plain
stupid. Therefor, if you're running on non-PNP OS, the PCI cards
won't get any IRQ assigned, hence not work. OTOH, by choosing
"disabled", a PNP-OS may still rearrange IRQ settings on these cards to
its likings (or just leave them as they are). So in general, it is
better to _always_ disable that option.
Michael
--
Michael Buchenrieder * mi...@scrum.greenie.muc.de * http://www.muc.de/~mibu
Lumber Cartel Unit #456 (TINLC) & Official Netscum
Note: If you want me to send you email, don't munge your address.
Tuang
This is just the sort of suggestion that I was looking for. I never
would have thought to check for something like PnP in the CMOS.
Unfortunately, Plug-and-Play OS was already set to "No" in the CMOS,
so there's nothing for me to change. Grrrr....
Any other ideas? Should I manually assign it an IRQ? If so, how would
I pick one to avoid a conflict? Manually assigning IRQs seems like a
great way to screw up a system. It seems as though if there weren't
some other problem, it would have been automatically assigned, so even
manually assigning it might leave me with some other unresolved issue.
Is there something else to look at?
I appreciate the feedback saying "3Com cards never work, get another
card", but that seems a little drastic as a first step. It may turn
out to be the truth, but this card has worked fine under both Win98
and Win2K, so it seems as though the most recent (RH) Linux shouldn't
be surprised by it. It's not an obscure manufacturer or some ancient
model or some brand new model....
Any ideas for what to try next?
Thanks for any suggestions.
Michael Buchenrieder <mi...@scrum.muc.de> wrote in message news:<H9BKn...@scrum.muc.de>...
Tuang
tell RH 8.0 to use one? And is it really likely that RH 8.0 would
assign the wrong driver when the right one was also available?
Thanks.
"The Unknown Hacker" <jackas...@hotmail.nospam.com> wrote in message news:<1KIY9.678433$xm4.27488169@Flipper>...
> Try using some other 3Com drivers included in RH8
> "petri timonen" <petri....@pp.inet.fi> schreef in bericht
> news:24DY9.1019$U%.706@read3.inet.fi...
Michael Buchenrieder
[Please stop top-posting]
>Thanks, Michael.
Pleasure :-)
>This is just the sort of suggestion that I was looking for. I never
>would have thought to check for something like PnP in the CMOS.
>Unfortunately, Plug-and-Play OS was already set to "No" in the CMOS,
>so there's nothing for me to change. Grrrr....
[...]
OK, so we have tp serach a bit more thoroughly. Are you sure that
- you're using a PCI NIC, instead of an ISA card;
- the driver selected is the correct one for your
specific model?
What 3Com card is is that you're trying to use, and which module
was loaded?
Tuang
>
> OK, so we have tp serach a bit more thoroughly. Are you sure that
>
> - you're using a PCI NIC, instead of an ISA card;
> - the driver selected is the correct one for your
> specific model?
>
> What 3Com card is is that you're trying to use, and which module
> was loaded?
>
I've taken some extra time to gather more info and try a few more
things. I appreciate your help and don't want to waste your time.
I checked the label on the card, and it says that it is a:
3C905B-TX Fast Etherlink XL PCI
I also still have a copy of Win98 on another partition, so I fired it
up, deleted its network driver and let it discover my card. When it
did, it assigned it a driver called:
3Com EtherLink 10/100 PCI TX NIC 3C905B-TX
and it was assigned to IRQ 10.
I was able to get an IP from the DHCP service in my Linksys router and
I connected to the Internet just fine.
So the card works, the hardware seems okay, the router had no trouble
with the setup -- everything appeared fine, end-to-end.
Then I fired up Red Hat 8.0 again. The Network Configuration utility
in Gnome showed eth0 as "inactive", and clicking the "Activate" button
once again said "Cannot activate network device eth0", as always.
Clicking the "Hardware" tab shows that it has assigned me a driver
called:
3Com 3c590/3c595/3c90x/3cx980
I assume that the "3c90x" part means "3Com model 90x", where x could
equal 5 and refer to my card, so it does seem as though Linux has
detected the card and made the right guess when it comes to its driver
set. I'm suspicious of such a generic driver, when even old Win98 had
a very specific 3C905 driver, but what do I know?
Clicking the "Edit" button tells me IRQ: "Unknown". Manually setting
it to IRQ 10 (as it was in Win98) and clicking "OK" results in
"Warning: the Ethernet card could not be initialized. Please verify
your settings and try again".
So, with little to lose, I tried setting it to each of the other
possible IRQ values in the list (3-15). Not one of them worked.
I tried some of the other drivers, and nothing worked.
In the Network Adapters Configuration dialog (where it shows the IRQ
setting), there are several other settings that are all blank:
IRQ: Unknown
MEM:
IO:
IO1:
IO2:
DMA0:
DMA1:
I don't know if I'm supposed to put anything in those boxes, and I
don't know what else to try.
Any ideas?
Thanks again.
The Unknown Hacker
the 3com drivers
And yeah.. I had this problem with both PCMCIA and PCI network-cards from
different manufacturers...just some driver tweaking really works
Good luck buddy!
"Tuang" <tuan...@hotmail.com> schreef in bericht
news:df045d93.03012...@posting.google.com...
peter
>
> I appreciate the feedback saying "3Com cards never work, get another
> card", but that seems a little drastic as a first step. It may turn
> out to be the truth, but this card has worked fine under both Win98
> and Win2K, so it seems as though the most recent (RH) Linux shouldn't
> be surprised by it. It's not an obscure manufacturer or some ancient
> model or some brand new model....
Take no notice, I have three 3Com cards running happily in RedHat 8.0
machines: two PCI and one PCMCIA card, never had a problem with any of
them.
peter
> this problem.
>
> I installed Red Hat 8.0, fired it up, opened Mozilla, and found that I
> had no network connection. Mozilla can't find anything ("www.yahoo.com
> could not be found", so no DNS, I assume), and ping'ing Yahoo from the
> command line gives me "unknown host" (also no DNS).
>
I would open the /etc/sysconfig/hwconf file, search for NETWORK and
delete the relevant section. Also delete any alias for eth0 from
/etc/modules.conf, and delete
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
Then run kudzu and let it redetect the card.
Michael Buchenrieder
[...]
>3C905B-TX Fast Etherlink XL PCI
[...]
This card _should_ work without any problems, using the 3c59x driver
suppiled with your distribution.
The fact that the card doesn't get an IRQ worries me. Please show us
the output of "dmesg". I suspect that the problem isn't the card, but
the fact that your kernel is unable to receive the correct information
from the BIOS in the first place. If so, you should see a line with
something like "unable to read PCI table" or similar. That's bad.
It means that you will either need a newer kernel, a different
BIOS version or a new motherboard (assuming there's no BIOS update
available).
You might want to get a copy of a tool called "vortex-diag, available
at www.scyld.com, to further analyze the status of the 3C905 card.
OTOH, getting a cheap NE2K PCI card is probably easier...
Adnair1
Tuang, tuan...@hotmail.com writes ...
...
I have the same problem with a SiS 900/7016 CI card. However,
when I bought this m/c the fellow at the shop was able to connect
to the outside world. When I brought it home using a cable modem
line I cannot "Activate" it using DHCP. But, I could activate it when
I gave it an IP address, subnet mask & gateway address. But I
could connect to the outside world.
Any idea what is going on?
Peter, ne...@pandasys.co.uk wrote ...
> I would open the /etc/sysconfig/hwconf file, search for NETWORK and
>delete the relevant section. Also delete any alias for eth0 from
>/etc/modules.conf, and delete
>/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
>Then run kudzu and let it redetect the card.
Peter, would I need to do this?
Thanks very much.
Damo Nair
adn...@aol.com
Tuang
archives, here's what I did:
I removed the previous hard drive, replaced it with a new one (a $39
9GB Quantum wide SCSI from a surplus store), reinstalled using mostly
defaults for everything, and ... it worked!
So, I don't know what the problem was. The previous hard disk may have
been on the verge of failure. That's what I suspect, but it may also
be because there was some problem related to it being a
multi-partition, multi-boot, System Commander controlled setup. And
maybe System Commander's formatting or disk resizing caused a media
problem.
But with a different hard drive, same SCSI controller, same 3Com
ethernet card, same everything else, but a single-partition (plus
swap) autopartitioned by RH 8.0, and a re-installation, it worked just
fine. In fact I'm posting this from Mozilla on my new Linux box.
Thanks so much to everyone who took the time to help!