eth0 does not showup in ifconfig -a

[vpg]

when i do ifconfig -a, it shows only 'lo'.

lspci gives

01:06.0 Ethernet Controller: Macronix, Inc. [MXIC] MX987x5 (rev 25)

I upgraded from Fedora 8 to Fedoara 9 alpha version.

How can i fix this problem?

Thanks,
vpg

[notageek]

ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.3
ifconfig -a

[vpg]

for #ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.3
SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
eth0: unknown interface: No such device

[notageek]

post the contents of /etc/modules.conf, lsmod and dmesg|grep eth

[bob]

Check page 4 and 5 here: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/...=180333&page=5

[vpg]

#cat /etc/modules.conf
cat: /etc/modules.conf: No such file ot directory
#lsmod
Module Size Used by
dm_snapshot 17765 0
dm_zero 5825 0
dm_morror 21569 0
dm_mod
ata_generic
pata_amd
libata
sd_mod
scsi_mod
ext3
jbd
mbcache
uhci_hcd
ohci_hcd
ehci_hcd

#dmesg| greo eth
// No output

[notageek]

I think, Bob has the last word on this topic

[vpg]

Okay.. will wait for a fix since the culprit it Fedora 9 Alpha release:-)

[stevea]

When the interface doesn't appear in "ifconfig -a" or better yet "ip addr" but the hardware appears in lspci, this means that no driver claimed the hardware. Perhaps the driver is broken, or perhaps the install never caused the driver to load. Note that an entry in modprobe.conf does NOT cause drivers to load !

If you know the driver then try loading it, I suspect you need "su - ; modprobe ne2k-pci" but that's just my guess at the driver you need.

[notageek]

Originally Posted by stevea

When the interface doesn't appear in "ifconfig -a" or better yet "ip addr" but the hardware appears in lspci, this means that no driver claimed the hardware. Perhaps the driver is broken, or perhaps the install never caused the driver to load. Note that an entry in modprobe.conf does NOT cause drivers to load !

If you know the driver then try loading it, I suspect you need "su - ; modprobe ne2k-pci" but that's just my guess at the driver you need.

How do you find out which driver its trying to load?
Answer:

[root@server ~]# more /etc/modules.conf 
alias eth0 pcnet32
alias char-major-14 es1371

What is modprobe.conf used for?
Answer:

[root@server ~]# more /etc/modprobe.conf
alias eth0 pcnet32
alias scsi_hostadapter mptbase
alias scsi_hostadapter1 mptscsih
alias snd-card-0 snd-ens1371
options snd-card-0 index=0
install snd-ens1371 /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-ens1371 && /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
remove snd-ens1371 { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-ens1371
alias usb-controller uhci-hcd

When the interface doesn't appear in "ifconfig -a" or better yet "ip addr" but the hardware appears in lspci, this means that no driver claimed the hardware.

Very true.

[stevea]

How do you find out which driver its trying to load?

Generally no one is *trying* to load a driver. You have to direct the kernel to load a driver.
The initrd ramdisk code has some drivers in it so it can handle the hard disk and some others. The /etc/init.d scripts load some drivers for the network basics and other kernel basic functionality. The startup scripts also execute and scripts called /etc/sysconfig/modules/*.modules and that is where you should add generic driver load commands (see below). As a special case *IF* you use the system-config-network RedHat system then when you execute "ifup eth0" (executed when you start at boot) then the driver for eth0 (see alias in /etc/modprobe.conf) is modprobe'd from the network-functions script. Normally eth0 is aliased to the real driver name in /etc/modprobe.conf .

To find which driver to load, you or anaconda must figure this out. You hunt through the kernel source code or google.com/linux ! Then YOU try to load the driver and see what "dmesg" or "ifconfig -a" reports as a result. It doesn't hurt to load a driver that isn't used, just try it.

Looking closer at your problem I see that your PCI Vend/part code should be
10d9 Macronix, Inc. [MXIC]
0531 MX987x5
(see /usr/share/hwdata/pci.ids)
And in the kernel source we have:
linux.../drivers/net/tulip/tulip_core.c:
{ 0x10d9, 0x0531, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, 0, 0, MX98715 },

So I guess it's the tulip driver not the ne2k-pci.
Try "su -; modprobe tulip"
then see what ifconfig -s reports.
If that works AND you want to use the redhat ifup stuff, then change modprobe.conf to

alias eth0 tulip

What is modprobe.conf used for?

Several things - there is a blacklist of drivers that shouldn't be loaded and there are compound commands that pass options to driver like

alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0
options snd-card-0 index=0
options snd-intel8x0 index=0

And it creates alias names for drivers.

alias scsi_hostadapter libata
alias scsi_hostadapter1 ata_piix

As I said th eRH scripts try to load the drivers aliased to eth0 ,eth1 ... when you 'ifup' that interface, but you must have the correct driver aliesed or .... your problem occurs.

modprobe.conf does not directly cause any driver to load.



===

If you want a driver loaded at boot time you can create a script called something.modules in /etc/sysconfig/modules to do it like:

cat /etc/sysconfig/modules/tulip.modules

#!/bin/sh
modprobe tulip >/dev/null 2>&1

Make the owner/perms like this: -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root

[notageek]

As a special case *IF* you use the system-config-network RedHat system then when you execute "ifup eth0" (executed when you start at boot) then the driver for eth0 (see alias in /etc/modprobe.conf) is modprobe'd from the network-functions script. Normally eth0 is aliased to the real driver name in /etc/modprobe.conf

Several things - there is a blacklist of drivers that shouldn't be loaded and there are compound commands that pass options to driver like

At least you seem to agree on the basics, when troubleshooting don't you think its necessary to look up device aliases? Then try to load them manually.

All this is a moot point really considering Bob's post.

[stevea]

Oh yeah - run "lspci -nn" and see if the PCI code is 10d9:0531, for the tulip driver.


If it's "1022:2000" or "1022:2001" then the pcnet32 driver is the correct one.

[stevea]

I suggested manually loading a driver right off as a test, but you should probably ignore the modprobe.conf table until you find the right driver.

By default there are no blacklisted drivers - so the only thing the modprobe.conf does is act as an indirection table for ethN. We know that indirection/alias loads the wrong driver, so modprobe.conf doesn't help us [[I suppose it removes one driver from the list of those to consider]].

Originally Posted by notageek

All this is a moot point really considering Bob's post.

Really ? Maybe I missed it in the volume, but Bob's thread just said some other people had network problems. It didn't say that everyone did or that the driver selection wasn't the problem. I think it's very likely that this can be used to create a working network unless something is seriously messed up in the kernel or the base network libraries.

[vpg]

Ah.. i rebuilt my system with Fedora 8. Should have waited for me replies..

Thank you all for helping me out.