Network config woes - Debian install on laptop

After sucessfully installing Debian on 4 desktop machines, I'm underway
trying to do same on my work laptop, a Dell Latitude 620.

The release I'm working with is Sarge 3.1R4. The current kernel
version is 2.6.8-2-386; I know I should ultimately upgrade to an smp
kernel. I'm installing from DVDs.

The initial install failed to detect my wired NIC, which XP reports to
be a Broadcom NetXtreme 57Xxx Gigabit. After a little searching, I
tried selecting the tg3 driver from the list; no dice. So, I installed
without the wired network, using only the DVD's packages.

Post-installation, I tried to configure the NIC a LOT of different
ways: installing etherconf and doing a dpkg-reconfigure, tried running
dhclient, tried manually editing /etc/network/interfaced and running
ifup, and more. I also tried doing all of the above after a 'modprobe
tg3', which by the way worked just fine. The Tuxmobil site, while very
informative, didn't solve my problems either.

A Knoppix live CD finds the NIC just fine! But it seems to be little
help as an example, because the interface is obviously run in some way
utterly different from what I'm used to: eth0 doesn't appear in
/etc/network/interfaces at all; the init.d networking script has no
effect, ifupdown doesn't affect eth0 etc. I can't even figure out
_what_ is starting the network at boot time, because the whole rc.x
hierarchy seems to be empty!

At this point I'm stumped. Any and all suggestions welcome.

One last interesting thing. A tuxmobil contributor, whose NIC worked
out of the box, got this from lspci:
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5752
Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
Here's what I get:
0000:09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation: Unknown device
1600 (rev 02)

Help!
Jon

Jon wrote:
> After sucessfully installing Debian on 4 desktop machines, I'm underway
> trying to do same on my work laptop, a Dell Latitude 620.
>
> The release I'm working with is Sarge 3.1R4. The current kernel
> version is 2.6.8-2-386; I know I should ultimately upgrade to an smp
> kernel. I'm installing from DVDs.

You only need a SMP kernel if you have more than one CPU. But your
problem is that your kernel doesn't know about your NIC. You need a
newer kernel!

You can get one from <http://www.backports.org> You can probably even
copy the one in your working Knoppix to your hard disk, rerun
update-grub and use that.

Robert

>
> The initial install failed to detect my wired NIC, which XP reports to
> be a Broadcom NetXtreme 57Xxx Gigabit. After a little searching, I
> tried selecting the tg3 driver from the list; no dice. So, I installed
> without the wired network, using only the DVD's packages.
>
> Post-installation, I tried to configure the NIC a LOT of different
> ways: installing etherconf and doing a dpkg-reconfigure, tried running
> dhclient, tried manually editing /etc/network/interfaced and running
> ifup, and more. I also tried doing all of the above after a 'modprobe
> tg3', which by the way worked just fine. The Tuxmobil site, while very
> informative, didn't solve my problems either.
>
> A Knoppix live CD finds the NIC just fine! But it seems to be little
> help as an example, because the interface is obviously run in some way
> utterly different from what I'm used to: eth0 doesn't appear in
> /etc/network/interfaces at all; the init.d networking script has no
> effect, ifupdown doesn't affect eth0 etc. I can't even figure out
> _what_ is starting the network at boot time, because the whole rc.x
> hierarchy seems to be empty!
>
> At this point I'm stumped. Any and all suggestions welcome.
>
> One last interesting thing. A tuxmobil contributor, whose NIC worked
> out of the box, got this from lspci:
> 09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5752
> Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
> Here's what I get:
> 0000:09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation: Unknown device
> 1600 (rev 02)
>
> Help!
> Jon
>

the smp kernel will be for my nifty Centrino dual-core cpu, but i agree
that's down the line.
had a bad feeling that installing Debian stable might bite me with the
newer laptop hardware, and was not disappointed.

> You can get one from <http://www.backports.org> You can probably even
> copy the one in your working Knoppix to your hard disk, rerun
> update-grub and use that.

which turned out to be an absolutely stellar suggestion!!
copying the kernel, it's associated System.map file, config file and
/lib/modules directory did the trick. i'm now up with kernel 2.6.17
and was able to get a wired network running with:

# modprobe tg3
# ifconfig eth0 up
# dhclient eth0

the only weird thing is that the Debian kernel looks at the hard drive
as IDE (I think, it uses "hda"), but the Knoppix kernel thinks it's
SCSI (I think, it uses "sda"). I don't exactly understand this, but
was able to make it work by playing with fstab. and grup/menu.lst.

however, this isn't the optimal way of doing things, is it? i probably
need to debianize my kernel, and so begins the next project...

THANKS, Robert!