Cannot Activate my RTL8139A NIC card

[shannonp]

I'm a newbie at all this but I've been 'battling' the problem of my NIC card (RTL8139A) not being able to activate.

The message I get when I try to activate is:

"Determining IP information for eth0...failed"

No matter what I do...it just won't activate...dare I say this but I'm gonna go back to an MS based OS if I can't get my NIC card to work.

The Distro I'm using is RedHat9 (Kernel 2.4.20-80)

Thanks in advance

 

[Morsing]

How do ou try to activate it?

What does 'ifconfig' say? 'lsmod'?

Henrik Morsing
Certified AIX 4.3 Systems Administration
& p690 Technical Support

 

[shannonp]

Thanks Morsing

I use network panel withint Redhat to try and activate the card.

A whole bunch of stuff comes up when I type those commands. It recognises my NIC card correctly...but it just won't let me activate it.

 

[danielhozac]

Bad cable perhaps? Are the lights on the NIC and on the other end on?

//Daniel

 

[shannonp]

...I've tested cables, replaced cables, replaced the NIC with another one...changed PCI slots, used another hub...mixed and matched right down to the 10th degree ...think I've done pretty much everything humanly possibly . Hehe, maybe thats my problem...maybe I need to call on higher powers ...lol

Thanks for your help thus far though Morsing.

 

[danielhozac]

Are you sure you have a DHCP server on your network?

//Daniel

 

[jwenting]

That seems indeed to be the problem.
If everything seems to work but you get an error about not being able to be assigned an IP address there is no DHCP server and you'll have to assign a static address instead.

Windows will probably either assign itself an IP address if none is given and no DHCP server is found (typically 192.168.0.1) or at least not complain (you'll just not be able to use IP based networking on your LAN) but Linux doesn't.

 

[pweegar]

Can you ping the card? (ping 127.0.0.1)? Does it respond? What excatly do you mean your card won't activate? If Redhat see it properly, sounds like more of a connection issue VS a NIC card issue. Can you set up a static IP address for the card and connect? Have you checked the subnet mask? Is it the samne as the reat of the network? Make any changes and then do a shutdown and reboot your pc.

 

[manarth]

pweegar - ping 127.0.0.1 does not ping an ethernet card.

127.0.0.1 pings the loopback device (do an ifconfig - you'll see eth0 and lo. lo is the device that handles all linux network loopbacks and works even without a NIC installed.)

you can use ifconfig to set a static IP address (alas, can't remember the format of the command atm) or you can specify in config file /etc/sysconfig/networks/ifcfg-eth0
(NB the above shows the location of the config file for Suse - can't remember the location in Redhat but the filename will most likely be the same).

<marc> i wonder what will happen if i press this...[ul][li]please give feedback on what works / what doesn't[/li][li]need some help? how to get a better answer: faq581-3339[/li][/ul]