[OLUG] NIC Purgatory

[Paul T. McNally]

I have 2 network cards that are SMC1211TX EZCard 10/100 PCI cards.
>From what I have read off the net they are NE2000 clones. When I install

RedHat 6.1, the card at eth0 is recognized and initiallized OK. Here are
the
lines from dmesg:

rtl8139.c:v1.07 5/6/99 Donald Becker
http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/rtl8139.html
eth0: SMC1211TX EZCard 10/100 (RealTek RTL8139) at 0xa400, IRQ 5,
00:e0:29:46:fa:c2.

When I rebuild the kernel, eth0 fails to initialize. I've tried many
times the last I
tried to use many of the driver options offered in the Config file.
Luckily the installation
kernel comes with a smp kernel and a non-smp kernel. As a note for the
curious,
it takes almost 6 minutes to compile a kernel using both processors and
it
takes almost 12 minutes to compile a kernel using only one processor.

I suspect I'll need to specify:

0xa400, IRQ 5, 00:e0:29:46:fa:c2

in lilo.conf so the kernel gets the specs on my network cards. I have no
idea
where or how to do that.

Also I have the other card at eth1 so what would I need in lilo.conf so
that
card gets initialized as well.

Also when RedHat 6.1 is installed, I suspect much of the IP
functionality
is by default not selected including ip_masquerading and ip_chains. Is
this
correct? The machine I am rebuilding is on a dsl line and I want to put
up a
firewall and use ip masquerading amongst other things. Plus I like to
have
an optimized kernel.

Paul

I don't feel like I am in NIC hell but I don't think this would qualify
as
NIC heaven thus NIC purgatory.


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