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No eth0 after mobo replacement


banjo
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I am stumped.

 

I have a Mandy 2008.1 which was running fine on a MSI Mother board, Intel dual core etc. On Monday, the mother board fried itself so we were dead. It literally put out a puff of smoke and died. That board is not available any more, so we got a Foxconn G41M series MOBO and swapped it for the MSI.

 

Now the computer boots OK. However, when I try to connect to the net, the system cannot connect. We have a working RJ45 plugged into the socket from our working switch to our DSL modem, and there are two lights lit up on the back of the MOBO, which means it is seeing a carrier on the wire. But the system sees no eth0 device. It is as if the LAN hardware does not exist.

 

When I do an ifconfig I get only the lo device.

 

I did an "ifup eth0" and got the message

 

"Device eth0 does not seem to be present."

 

I opend the Mandrake Control Center and took the following path:

Network and Internet

Set up a new network

Ethernet

No device can be found for this connection

 

I opened the Hardware Manager and found that all looks well except for two unknown devices in Bridges and System Controllers

2e31 and 2e30, and nothing about eth0.

 

The Foxconn document has two entries for the LAN hardware,

 

Lan chip Realtek 10/100 G41M-V

Lan chip Realtek 10/100/100Mbps (G41M-S/G41M)

 

I suspect that the hardware is not being recognized because we slipped it under the existing system and there is a driver issue. But I can find no help anywhere about where to begin to correct that.

 

I am so lost in this I don't know what to do. I was really really happy with my system the way it was, and I do not want to start over again. It took me a month to get it set up and working. Can anybody tell me how to get this LAN hardware recognized, a driver loaded, or whatever is needed.

 

Thanks so much

Banjo

(Still a novice after all these years)

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Thanks for the link.

 

I'm not sure how to install a driver, and it is too late to learn how tonight. Any tips on how to do this would be a great help.

 

Thanks,

Banjo

(_)=='=~

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Clear the CMOS on the new motherboard? You can do this by removing the battery for a few minutes and then placing it back.

 

It is a brand new MOBO, so I am not sure why clearing the BIOS would have any beneficial effect. What exactly will that do for me?

 

Thanks,

Banjo

(_)=='=~

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It could well be that the on-board ethernet chip is defective, it should at least show up in the output of 'lspci' even if it's unrecognized by the drivers.

If it doesn't show up in 'lspci' then it's either defective or there is some kind of conflict. Do you have any additional PCI/PCIe cards in the motherboard?

 

also try booting up with the network cable disconnected and see if the NIC gets detected then.

Edited by tux99
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Hopefully you don't need to manually download and install the driver from Realtek, although it is quite new 11/27/2009. I looked, and it is a tar.gz2 file named: r8168-8.015.00.tar.bz2

Here is a how to for installing the driver in Linux: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/R8168

 

Here is someone on the French Mandriva forum installing the driver...

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php%3Ft%3D120322&ei=gjQiS-uQDcf5nAeixaXwCQ&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAsQ7gEwAQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhow%2Bto%2Binstall%2Br8168-8.015.00.tar.bz2%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dopera%26rls%3Den%26hs%3DtLP

 

See this...

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=538448

 

And this...

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/linux-networking/125489-solved-realtek-rtl8111c-controller-compatibility-3.html

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The BIOS or motherboard is not the problem unless of course the card is disabled in the BIOS - which I doubt (but check it anyway). If you do a:

 

ifconfig -a

 

and see no ethx devices (where x is a number, eth0, eth1, and so on), then there is no module loaded for your card, and is why you can't get access to the network/internet.

 

Try the newer module that was mentioned before - compile it into the kernel if required and see if you get internet after this. I have an altansic card in my machine at home (onboard) and I can't get it with any distro that doesn't have a new kernel (so nothing in CentOS). Sometimes this happens, but in six months or so with a new distro release, you're card will be working fine without manual compilation (if you're lucky!).

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I am not at my Linux computer, so I can't try any of these ideas right now. Thanks for the info. I will look into it when I get home.

 

So far, the only device that is plugged into the PCIe is an NVidia graphics card, the model of which I do not have at hand. I did not set up the CMOS myself (my son did that) so I do not know if there was an option to disable the NIC or not.

 

I do not remember whether or not I installed the kernel source, and it is too late now because I have no internet to install the source so that I can compile the driver so that I can get to the internet so that I can install the kernel source etc. :o

 

Compiling a kernel is a whole learning curve that I have not been through yet, so that could take a while, especially if I did not install the source code.

 

If I have to, I will just plug in another NIC or USB wireless dongle and connect that way. Spending another month to figure out how to get the onboard NIC to work might not be worth the trouble.

 

Thanks,

Banjo

(_)=='=~

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A quick update.

 

I checked the CMOS and saw that the onboard LAN is definitely enabled. As the computer booted, I watched the verbose messages go by and saw a red [FAILED] for accessing the eth0 device saying that it doesn't exist. It went by too fast for me to get the exact wording, and I cannot find the error in any of the logs in /var/log. Does that mean that the hardware has failed?

 

If I have to RMA this MOBO then I am stuck with the same problem that I was trying to solve by getting the new board - the computer will be down for weeks.

 

I visited some of the suggested forums where they got their internet working by booting and rebooting with the RJ45 connected or not. I don't think that has anything to do with this problem because those people at least had intermittent connectivity. My system just says that the device doesn't exist. I tried it all anyway with no effect.

 

I cannot see myself learning how to compile a kernel just to see if a driver might fix this. Since when is the OS a slave to a driver? I thought that drivers were invented so you could swap out hardware without having to change the OS. When did that change?

 

Sorry if it sounds like just a complaint, but I don't know what to do next.

 

The sound has stopped working as well, but I assume that is because the onboard sound system is different and needs new drivers.

 

I think I will either go back to Newegg and order a PCI NIC or maybe just go to the Apple store and order a Mac. This sucks.

 

Any ideas that don't involve just giving up would be appreciated.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

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I think I will either go back to Newegg and order a PCI NIC or maybe just go to the Apple store and order a Mac. This sucks.

 

 

You didn't post the output of lspci yet, but in any case buying a PCI NIC is probably the quickest and cheapest solution (I'd buy it from some local PC store, it's quicker and they are so cheap anyway that you won't save much by buying from newegg).

Edited by tux99
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I can't find anyplace around here to buy a cheap NIC off the shelf. It is all wireless stuff, and I want this computer to hook into my router with a wire (to trouble shoot the wireless stuff LOL).

 

I will try to get to the lspci tomorrow. I was wicked busy today... two flat tires on my wife's car (two flats at the same time!), shopping and all kinds of stuff. I am hoping for some quiet time tomorrow to look into this.

 

Banjo

(_)=='=~

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