OK...I'm reeeeally new at this.

I recently installed Mandrake 8.0 on my system. Everything seems to function fine except for my primary ethernet card(SMC 8432T Etherpower). Linux seems to have installed a driver for it, but it refuses to connect to the internet. Firstly, I think that the driver may need to be updated, since the name that it displayed for my card is incorrect and linux hangs when I try to configure the card. I found a driver for it, but (now I'm embarrased) have no idea how to install the driver (it's in .c format).

Also, does anyone have any experience running their Linux box on @home or other similar cable service provider? I want to make sure all of the IP's and DNS's, etc are correct. I'm not sure if this trouble is driver based or if it's just me.

I'm pretty new at this, so just bear with me I've been using Windows for quite a while and can do a lot with it, but I think it's time for a change. Help me learn something! Thanks for the help.

Okay, .c format is a precompiled format. Your going to need to compile the driver. Then manually add it in. sounds tough so you might want to check out the ethernet Howto at http://www.linuxdoc.org .
Once you get that working, I have connected with at home, the easiest way to do this and make sure all your settings are cool to go, just use Linuxconf, you should be able to find it in one of your menus in X.

Thanks...I'll give it a shot. Wish me luck.

Before compiling a new driver, you might check to see if the current one works, but just is configured wrong. Run ifconfig and see if eth0 is listed as a device, and that the IP and other info is correct. If so, then try pinging a well known site - like linuxquestions.org. If that fails, then ping using the octal quad some similar site. If that works, it's the DNS. If both fail, then you aren't getting out the gateway.

You may not need to compile the driver.. I just got my Linux setup working with a Linksys ethernet card and AT&T @Home (and just downloaded StarOffice at around 450KB/sec .. rather wide-eyed..)

My card needed the tulip driver, which I found in /usr/src/linux/drivers/net

If your driver is already there you probably won't have to compile it. I found all I needed to do was add the line:

alias eth0 tulip <<-- replace tulip with your driver

in the file /etc/modules.conf

Then, when I next booted and did an ifconfig command, there it was!

So it _may_ be that simple for you... just try it in case (I spent a while messing around with compiling drivers before I realised it was that simple).

After a little research, it seems that linux detected my ethernet card correctly....but it still doesn't work. My other ethernet card (linksys 10/100) shares IRQ 9 with my USB Controller, but this shouldn't have anything to do with my eth0 (SMC 8432...IRQ5) being able to connect to my ISP, should it? Also, when I recently tried to configure it under Drakconfig, I get this message:

insmod'ing module de4x5 failed at usr/lib/libdrakx/modules.pm line 510

That didn't sound good.

Also, here's a snippet from my boot log message (I apologize for the length).

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: PCI: Found IRQ 9 for device 00:1f.4

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: PCI: The same IRQ used for device 02:0b.0

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:1f.4 to 64

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: usb-uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0xa000, IRQ 9

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: usb-uhci.c: Detected 2 ports

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: hub.c: USB hub found

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: hub.c: 2 ports detected

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: hub.c: USB new device connect on bus1/2, assigned device number 2

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: usb.c: USB device 2 (vend/prod 0x46d/0xc00c) is not claimed by any active driver.

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: usb.c: registered new driver usb_mouse

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: input0: Logitech USB Mouse on usb1:2.0

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: Winbond Super-IO detection, now testing ports 3F0,370,250,4E,2E ...

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: Winbond chip at EFER=0x2e key=0x87 devid=87 devrev=00 oldid=00

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: Winbond unknown chip type

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: SMSC Super-IO detection, now testing Ports 2F0, 370 ...

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: 0x378: FIFO is 16 bytes

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: 0x378: writeIntrThreshold is 9

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: 0x378: readIntrThreshold is 9

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778) [PCSPP,TRISTATE,COMPAT,ECP]
May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: parport0: irq 7 detected

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: eth0: DC21041 at 0xd800 (PCI bus 2, device 10), h/w address 00:e0:29:36:f2:a7,

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: and requires IRQ5 (provided by PCI BIOS).
May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: de4x5.c:V0.546 2001/02/22 davies@maniac.ultranet.com

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: eth0: media is unconnected, link down or incompatible connection.

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: eth0: media is TP.

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: Linux Tulip driver version 0.9.14d (April 3, 2001)

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: PCI: Found IRQ 5 for device 02:0a.0

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: tulip: eth1: I/O region (0x80@0xd800) unavailable, aborting

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: PCI: Found IRQ 9 for device 02:0b.0

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: PCI: The same IRQ used for device 00:1f.4

May 26 09:59:41 cn537875-a kernel: eth1: Lite-On PNIC-II rev 37 at 0xd400, 00:A0:CC:34:B7:38, IRQ 9.



I'm about to give up. Any ideas?