[TriLUG] network cards

[M. Mueller (bhu5nji)]

On Friday 25 January 2002 03:15 pm, you wrote:
> Mark,
> I have a dual homed machine with heterogenious NICs as well. The
> solution I found is to use a modular kernel with the card's drivers as
> modules. Then add two lines to your modules.conf:
> alias eth0 pcnet32
> alias eth1 eepro100

If you have a system with one Ethernet card (I/F-A) which is a pcnet32, then 
the system will associate eth0 with I/F-A, and the alias above will associate 
the pcnet32.o driver in /lib/modules/blah-blah-blah/net with eth0, so when 
the kernel references eth0, pcnet32.o will be loaded (if not already) and the 
kernel will execute pcnet32.o code.

If you add another Ethernet card to your system (I/F-B) which is a eepro100, 
it is possible that I/F-A will become eth1 and I/F-B will be the new eth0. 
Then the aliases above will lead to failure.  The fix would be to reverse the 
statements as:

alias eth1 pcnet32
alias eth0 eepro100

Unless the association between I/F-A and eth0 can be controlled (and I don't 
think it can be on all machines), then a trial-and-error method with the 
aliases as described above is a necessary process.

My 2.2 systems can get by without having the alias for the net drivers - even 
when I change card types (tulip vs rtl8139).  There is something else at work 
connecting the symbol eth<x> to it appropriate driver.  I suspect that it is 
a PCI scanning function.  In my 2.2 systems, I am using pci-scan.o 
(http://www.scyld.com/network/updates.html#pci-scan).  In my 2.4.8 system, I 
found /lib/modules/2.4.8-26mdk/modules.pcimap (which contain both pcnet32 and 
eepro100 references).

Have you tried running without aliases in your /etc/conf.modules?
What is your kernel version? If you have a 2.2 then maybe updating to new 
drivers that use pci-scan.o will help eliminate the need for aliases.  If you 
have a 2.4, then it seems that the scanning function is already built in to 
the system.

mjm

>
> Now when you reference eth0, the kernel will use the pcnet32 driver and
> find a pcnet32 card to attach it to. This works for me.
>
> Ken
>
> On Fri, 2002-01-25 at 08:00, Mark wrote:
> > I am having a bizzare problem - I have a netfinity-5100 with dual nic's
> > - It has an on board (eth0) pcnet32 --- the second is in pci slot 1
> > (eepro100) (eth1) ...  When the system boots up, eth0 expects, eepro100
> > and eth1 exepect pcnet32 - so I bring it up in Single user mode, change
> > the drivers and do an init 5 (all is well) -- if i try to reboot, then I
> > start all over.  Has anyone any idea why the devices/software switch
> > positions? Could it be the bios?
> >
> > tia,
> > mark
> >
> >
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