e100 network card on Vector Linux

Situation: I had a HPJ2585 network card with a h100 chip installed in the system. Unfortunately it wouldn’t work over 10Mbit/s no matter what, regardless of drivers. After half an hour of scavenging through boxes of old software I found an Intel e100 one (actually I found three but two were not working properly), I got out the HP, put in the Intel. Rebooted, Windows found it working perfectly. Rebooted, Vector Linux did not detect it, I had no ping, nothing, ls /dev | grep eth was dead silent. After an hour of googling and asking people around I got it working.

Procedure:

We check to see if the corresponding module is loaded. This module would normally reside in /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/[depends on kernel version]. To check to see if it’s loaded type lsmod. If it’s loaded you should see a e100 there.

If the module is loaded skip to the next step. I did not see any e100’s there so I loaded it by modprobe e100 (check man modprobe).
Checking out with dmesg:

e100: Intel(R) PRO/100 Network Driver, 3.3.6-k2-NAPI
e100: Copyright(c) 1999-2004 Intel Corporation
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKB] enabled at IRQ 11
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:0e.0[A] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
e100: eth0: e100_probe: addr 0x40200000, irq 11, MAC addr 00:90:27:12:10:XX


Woohoo, we added the module. For the sake of doing it, run again lsmod. See? It’s there.

Now we need to do the basic network configuration:

# ifconfig eth0 [IPa] netmask [IPb]
# route add default gw [IPc]
# echo nameserver [IPd] > /etc/resolv.conf


Where the cryptic IP’s are, in this order — the NIC’s IP, the netmask for the network, gateway (router) IP and nameserver’s IP.

Everything should be up and running now.

The other way around (easier), specific for VL is to run netconfig and then vinet.

Now I can get back to listening music over the network without the fear of the mighty glitches.

Useful reading, again and again and again and again and again: man ifconfig, man route, man modprobe.