RH9 eth0 issue

[Kooldino]

I had RH9 running happily on an Epox 8rda+ Nforce2 motherboard. Out of nowhwere, the motherboard died. I could not find any more 8rda+ boards, so the closest thing I could find was the 8RDA3I.

The boards are pretty much the same, but one notable difference is the Realtek RTL8201BL on the 8rda+ vs the Realtek RTL8201CL PHY network chip on the 8RDA3I.

Anyway, I swapped out the dead 8rda+ for the new 8RDA3I and hoped for the best. Upon bootup, it detected a hardware change, removed some old hardware configs from the system (including the network driver), and added a few new "unknowns".

The system seems to run fine, except for one major issue: I have no eth0.

I tried installing the nforce drivers found here, but it didn't seem to help.

I ran "lspci" and got this:

[root@localhost root]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 01e0 (rev c1)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 01eb (rev c1)
00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 01ee (rev c1)
00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 01ed (rev c1)
00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 01ec (rev c1)
00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 01ef (rev c1)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0080 (rev a3)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0084 (rev a1)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0087 (rev a1)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0087 (rev a1)
00:02.2 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0088 (rev a2)
00:04.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 008c (rev a3)
00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 008b (rev a3)
00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0085 (rev a3)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (rev c1)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 MX/MX 400]
(rev b2)

Also, under "Hardware Browser->System devices" there is a "Generic nvnet device" that doesn't seem to be doing anything (it's probably only there due to the driver I installed) and a "Linux 2.4.20-8 ehci-hcd PCI device 10:de:0088 (nVidia Corporation)

How can I get an eth0 installed on this setup?

Thanks.

[Haig]

I've seen quite a few complaints about this & so far, there are only 2 things that worked for some:
1 - http://www.hailfinger.org/carldani/l...hes/forcedeth/

Thats the link to the Forcedeath Driver which worked for some

If your using kernel 2.6, it has the forcedeath module built so you just have to recompile the kernel with it enabled.

BTW, I had to use this for Suse 10 to get mine to work.

2 - Some people went back to nforce-1.0-0261 that worked for them. You can get that from http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_nforce_1.0-0261

[TnT]

The forcedeath is really good even though it is unofficial. I believe many people with Epox boards use it.

[Kooldino]

What's the easiest way of telling which kernel version it runs?

[leech]

uname -a

That'll print the kernel version to the console.

According to Distrowatch, RH9 has kernel version 2.4.20

Leech

[Kooldino]

Yup, I'm on 2.4.20

I'll give the old nvidia driver a go along with the forcedeath.

How do I remove the nvidia driver before I go to install the forcedeath?

[Kooldino]

Ugh, I'm trying to do an rpm -i --oldpackage 'packagepathandname'

but when I do, it just sits there and stares at me. Dammit.

No matter what I do from the rpm command line, it just sits there like a jerk and refuses to do anything.

[Kooldino]

The following distributions support forcedeth:
* SUSE 9.1
* SUSE 9.0 with current update kernel (forcedeth 0.23)
* Gentoo (since when?)
* Fedora Core 2
* Xbox Linux (since when?)
* please send me corrections/additions to this list

RH9 is not int that list, but Fedora Core 2 is. Should I just update the kernel or what? And how do I go about updating the kernel?

[Wombat]

There's no easy rpm for RH9 to upgrade to 2.6 kernels - RH9 is well past EOL

You might be interested in the Fedora Legacy project, http://www.fedoralegacy.org/

Otherwise, moving to Fedora Core 5 may be for you.