Can't activate network device (NIC)

I'm a Linux newbie and am trying to configure my Dell I4100 notebook (which
is dualbooted for W2000 and RHL9) to connect Linux with my DSL provider,
Sympatico. My NIC (3Com 3C905C-TX) is compatible with RHL9 but when I try
to activate the device I get the error message "Determining IP info for eth0
.....failed" after about a minute. The NIC wasn't accepted when I first
installed RHL and delayed bootup while it diagnosed the interface. Is this
a PnP issue?

I'm pretty sure I have the pppoe installed as well as the PPP Daemon and
have loaded Sympatico's configuration files ("free_pty", "pppoe",
"start-pppoe" & "stop-pppoe" - to directory /usr/local/bin; "options.pppoe"
to directory /etc/ppp).

I've explored some of the various Linux sites and forums but haven't been
able to get much info.

Any help would be appreciated. I'd be grateful for any links and or
newsgroups that might be able to help.

Thanks in advance.

--
(E-Mail Removed)

In article <RLN3b.15915$(E-Mail Removed)>,
bowmma <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>I'm pretty sure I have the pppoe installed as well as the PPP Daemon and
>have loaded Sympatico's configuration files ("free_pty", "pppoe",
>"start-pppoe" & "stop-pppoe" - to directory /usr/local/bin; "options.pppoe"
>to directory /etc/ppp).

I recently installed RH 9.0 for someone who was using Sympatico. It was
completely vanilla - all he had to do was enter the correct user information.

"bowmma" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<RLN3b.15915$(E-Mail Removed) m>...

> I'm a Linux newbie and am trying to configure my Dell I4100 notebook (which
> is dualbooted for W2000 and RHL9) to connect Linux with my DSL provider,
> Sympatico. My NIC (3Com 3C905C-TX) is compatible with RHL9 but when I try
> to activate the device I get the error message "Determining IP info for eth0
> ....failed" after about a minute. The NIC wasn't accepted when I first
> installed RHL and delayed bootup while it diagnosed the interface. Is this
> a PnP issue?

Redhat states, as you say, on their web site this device is
"supported". That does not mean, evidently, that they have a driver
for it on the cd's, or, if they do, it will work with your network
card. That is not their problem. The type problem you describe is
well known to them as you can see by doing a search on "3Com
3c905c-tx" on their website as user after user has sought help for
this and, instead of simply getting together some drivers that work,
or telling the truth which is that 3com nic cards just don't work very
well with linux and ought to be avoided by the user without a detailed
technical education, they have, over the years, and have not, so far
as I have ever been able to find, provided even simple instructions
how to solve this problem.

As you may have noticed when your system was trying to load your nic
card, Redhat thoughtfully pointed you to:

http://www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html where you can begin your
education learning how to configure the source code for a driver,
compile it, and manually load it into your kernel. Good luck.

You, or anyone else, who uses Redhat's site to determine what hardware
to buy because Redhat "supports" it, is wasting their time, as the url
cited above makes abundantly clear without saying so in so many words.

cdstrand wrote:

> "bowmma" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<RLN3b.15915$(E-Mail Removed) m>...
>
>
>>I'm a Linux newbie and am trying to configure my Dell I4100 notebook (which
>>is dualbooted for W2000 and RHL9) to connect Linux with my DSL provider,
>>Sympatico. My NIC (3Com 3C905C-TX) is compatible with RHL9 but when I try
>>to activate the device I get the error message "Determining IP info for eth0
>>....failed" after about a minute. The NIC wasn't accepted when I first
>>installed RHL and delayed bootup while it diagnosed the interface. Is this
>>a PnP issue?
>
>
> Redhat states, as you say, on their web site this device is
> "supported". That does not mean, evidently, that they have a driver
> for it on the cd's, or, if they do, it will work with your network
> card. That is not their problem. The type problem you describe is
> well known to them as you can see by doing a search on "3Com
> 3c905c-tx" on their website as user after user has sought help for
> this and, instead of simply getting together some drivers that work,
> or telling the truth which is that 3com nic cards just don't work very
> well with linux and ought to be avoided by the user without a detailed
> technical education, they have, over the years, and have not, so far
> as I have ever been able to find, provided even simple instructions
> how to solve this problem.

3com doesn't work very well *period*. I keep seeing hardware failures
with them, find that various models refuse to release their DHCP
settings without a full power cycle under Windows as well as Linux, and
find their naming scheme for drivers to have absolutely nothing to do
with the model number of the card and they're inconsistent naming
schemes from Windows version to Windows version.


> As you may have noticed when your system was trying to load your nic
> card, Redhat thoughtfully pointed you to:
>
> http://www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html where you can begin your
> education learning how to configure the source code for a driver,
> compile it, and manually load it into your kernel. Good luck.
>
> You, or anyone else, who uses Redhat's site to determine what hardware
> to buy because Redhat "supports" it, is wasting their time, as the url
> cited above makes abundantly clear without saying so in so many words.

I've found RedHat to be pretty helpful in listing only hardware that
they *know* works, rather than oddball hand-built combinations that only
work on alternate Tuesdays if you squint really hard and beep your nose.
(I've been doing a lot of laptop installations of stuff that "someone
found a webpage that said you could install Linux" lately, for laptops
of a different model number and graphics chipsets....)

> "bowmma" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>> is dualbooted for W2000 and RHL9) to connect Linux with my DSL provider,
>> Sympatico. My NIC (3Com 3C905C-TX) is compatible with RHL9 but when I try
>> to activate the device I get the error message "Determining IP info for eth0
>> ....failed" after about a minute.

DHCP failure. Run your DHCP client with debugging enabled. If it's
dhcpcd that means it will log to your syslog "debug" facility. See the
appropriate log file for the DHCP results.

.... but wait!

You said DSL. Many DSL providers use PPP over Ethernet. In that case I
wouldn't expect DHCP to succeed. There are a lot of Sympatico users in
these newsgroups, so perhaps one of them can tell you whether they use
DHCP or PPPoE. (As a last resort you could try calling the ISP.)

>> The NIC wasn't accepted when I first
>> installed RHL and delayed bootup while it diagnosed the interface.

Again check the logs. Check "dmesg", "lsmod", "lspci -v". Find the parts
pertaining to your eth0 and post them.

>> Is this a PnP issue?

PnP refers to ISA, and this is a PCI NIC.

In article <(E-Mail Removed) >,
cdstrand wrote:
> well known to them as you can see by doing a search on "3Com
> 3c905c-tx" on their website as user after user has sought help for
> this and, instead of simply getting together some drivers that work,
> or telling the truth which is that 3com nic cards just don't work very
> well with linux and ought to be avoided by the user without a detailed

This is all news to me. I've been successfully using 3com NIC's for
quite some time. One of them is a 3c905c-tx, and it was absolutely no
trouble to set up. It formerly ran in a production router / server as
the internal interface sharing a T1 line. To my knowledge it has been
extensively used under kernels 2.4.5 and 2.4.18. I have it running under
2.4.17 here.

In all cases it has used the 3c59x driver which came with the stock
kernel, and was recognised by the Slackware netconfig script, which very
simply tries to load numerous NIC drivers until one succeeds.

> http://www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html where you can begin your
> education learning how to configure the source code for a driver,
> compile it, and manually load it into your kernel. Good luck.

I'm not saying you're wrong, because it's quite possible that there are
both good and bad "sub-versions" of Tornado cards. But this definitely
does not fit with my experience. I put my Tornado in the most important
spot on my LAN, the internal interface for the router. (The external
interface is an ISA 3c509B, which like the others I've used, has been
very good too. I had minor problems setting one of those up one time,
because there was no media connected.)

Yes, I'm a professional, but what I'm saying is that I've not had to use
any high-level skills against my 3com NIC's (except as above, which was
user error!)

Oh ... BTW, I should add that I've not been 100% happy with 3com. Their
3c996 Gigabit card is junk. It wasn't worth the trouble to try to get it
working. It was cheaper for the customer to buy Intel Pro/1000's, which
do a great job for us.

> You, or anyone else, who uses Redhat's site to determine what hardware
> to buy because Redhat "supports" it, is wasting their time, as the url
> cited above makes abundantly clear without saying so in so many words.

I looked but didn't catch that. Of course if Don Becker says a NIC is
poorly made, take his word for it!
--
/dev/rob0 - preferred_email=i$((28*28+28))@softhome.net
or put "not-spam" or "/dev/rob0" in Subject header to reply

On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 15:24:10 -0400, "bowmma" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>I'm a Linux newbie and am trying to configure my Dell I4100 notebook (which
>is dualbooted for W2000 and RHL9) to connect Linux with my DSL provider,
>Sympatico. My NIC (3Com 3C905C-TX) is compatible with RHL9 but when I try
>to activate the device I get the error message "Determining IP info for eth0
>....failed" after about a minute. The NIC wasn't accepted when I first
>installed RHL and delayed bootup while it diagnosed the interface. Is this
>a PnP issue?

I can't help much, but for what it's worth, the 3C905 line is
supported and works perfectly under RH9. I'm using a few dozen of
them. The problem isn't an unsupported NIC. It might be a defective
NIC, or a plug&pray issue.

Mike-

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<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed)>. ..

(( cuts ))

> This is all news to me. I've been successfully using 3com NIC's for
> quite some time. One of them is a 3c905c-tx, and it was absolutely no
> trouble to set up. It formerly ran in a production router / server as
> the internal interface sharing a T1 line. To my knowledge it has been
> extensively used under kernels 2.4.5 and 2.4.18. I have it running under
> 2.4.17 here.
>
> In all cases it has used the 3c59x driver which came with the stock
> kernel, and was recognised by the Slackware netconfig script, which very
> simply tries to load numerous NIC drivers until one succeeds.

I have no idea how my 3com card works, out of the box, on the
Slackware distribution, and I didn't mean to imply the card (mine is a
3c575-tx) is not supported in linux, and doesn't work well in linux.
Redhat lists the card as "supported", it's just that to use it with
their distribution, which is what the original author (and me) were
trying to do, to Red Hat, evidently, "supported" does not mean that
you won't be recompiling the kernel if you try to install this device
with RH9. The problem seems to be with Red Hat's distribution, not
the linux kernel.

/dev/rob0 wrote:
>
> > "bowmma" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> >
> >> is dualbooted for W2000 and RHL9) to connect Linux with my DSL provider,
> >> Sympatico. My NIC (3Com 3C905C-TX) is compatible with RHL9 but when I try
> >> to activate the device I get the error message "Determining IP info for eth0
> >> ....failed" after about a minute.
>
> DHCP failure. Run your DHCP client with debugging enabled. If it's
> dhcpcd that means it will log to your syslog "debug" facility. See the
> appropriate log file for the DHCP results.
>
> ... but wait!
>
> You said DSL. Many DSL providers use PPP over Ethernet. In that case I
> wouldn't expect DHCP to succeed. There are a lot of Sympatico users in
> these newsgroups, so perhaps one of them can tell you whether they use
> DHCP or PPPoE. (As a last resort you could try calling the ISP.)

Sympatico uses PPPoE.

The docs from the RoaringPenguin PPPoE package (rp-pppoe) were all I
needed to get up and running.

You should just need to 'modprobe <ethernet driver>' followed by
'ifconfig eth0 up'. (Note that when using PPPoE, the ethernet device
you're using does *not* need an IP. The corresponding PPP device will
get it automatically.) Edit the rp-pppoe config with your
login/password information, then 'ppp call dsl-provider'.

Michael W. Cocke <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<(E-Mail Removed)>. ..

(( cuts ))

> I can't help much, but for what it's worth, the 3C905 line is
> supported and works perfectly under RH9. I'm using a few dozen of
> them. The problem isn't an unsupported NIC. It might be a defective
> NIC, or a plug&pray issue.

Really? His problem looks suspiciously like mine, though I have a
3c975-TX cardbus pcmcia card. RH9 installs it, says everything is
fine, then, when loading the kernel detects a problem. I can then
ping the computers on the same hub, and the gateway on the other side
of the dsl modem at the phone company, but can go no further.

As an experiment, since I read this problem was introduced in RH8, I
loaded RH72 on the laptop this morning, and the card worked fine, and
I was able to ping anyone, and do digs, etc.

How did you install RH9 on these computers? From scratch? And do you
know what driver they are using? I'm asking to see if we can
determine exactly what is different and, therefore, wrong.

In article <(E-Mail Removed) >,
cdstrand wrote:
> I have no idea how my 3com card works, out of the box, on the
> Slackware distribution, and I didn't mean to imply the card (mine is a
> 3c575-tx) is not supported in linux, and doesn't work well in linux.
> Redhat lists the card as "supported", it's just that to use it with
> their distribution, which is what the original author (and me) were

As I suspected (confirmed by Jean-Paul) the OP's problem seems to be one
of using the wrong authentication protocol with the ISP. We have yet to
see any evidence from the OP to indicate that the NIC *device* is not
activated and working (at least since I started paying attention to this
thread; I apologise if I missed something before.) I suspect that once
PPPoE is set up, the problem will be gone.

Yours is a PCMCIA card, and there are some other hoops for you to jump
through: is the PCMCIA subsystem working? If it's CardBus, hotplug? Are
they loading the correct driver? Yes, they must be ...

.... you said in the other subthread that you can ping. That's proof of a
working NIC and driver, as well as at least partially-configured TCP/IP
settings. Your problem sounds like either name resolution or routing,
and the answer lies in /etc/pcmcia/network.opts, I bet. The man pages
for route(8), ifconfig(8), and resolver(5) might help. See also the
networking HOWTOs at tldp.org.

> trying to do, to Red Hat, evidently, "supported" does not mean that
> you won't be recompiling the kernel if you try to install this device
> with RH9. The problem seems to be with Red Hat's distribution, not
> the linux kernel.

Obviously I cannot say since I do not use Red Hat. I do know, however,
that RH starts with a Linux kernel. Have they added patches which break
the 3c59x driver? This seems improbable.
--
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