Problem with the network card on installation

[dikson]

Hi all,
I m a newbie to gentoo (and linux) please bear with me. i have a problem while i install gentoo 2005:1 on a dell sc420 server. i have everything installed fine (i think) until the point where i boot the machine up. it says that it cant locate a network device, but i knew that there is one and it works. Since when i boot it up on the cd, it is able to dl packages off the internet. I knew that there is the driver that i need on the cd, but i dunno how to find out which is the one that i need. What commands can i use to find out what is the network driver for my network card?? and how do i install it (or copy it) from the cd and make it to work at bootup??

Thanks for you help:lol:

[TheRAt]

While booted on the CD, run lsmod
This will list all the modules that are loaded.. One of these will probably be for your ethernet card..

You will then need to make sure that the particular driver you need is compiled, either in your kernel, or as a module..
If you build as a module, you will probably need to have this listed in the /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 file (assuming you are using the 2.6 kernel...

If you need more help, please supply hardware details on the network card, ie what it is, and someone can guide you to the module you will need... you can use lspci to get this information...[/code]
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Hi newbie.
I'm an expert newbie ( 3 posts lol ) but I think I might help because I was exactly in the same situation as yours.

I used genkernel to compile the kernel
The problem is to know what module is required for your network adapter , or for the network chip if it's integrated on the motherboard.
In my case, I needed the forcedeth module ( I have an Nforce4 chipset on my motherboard )

Go to the Gentoo manual:

7.e. Configuring Kernel Modules

Configuring the Modules

You should list the modules you want automatically loaded in /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 (or kernel-2.4). You can add extra options to the modules too if you want.

To view all available modules, run the following find command. Don't forget to substitute "<kernel version>" with the version of the kernel you just compiled:

Code Listing 21: Viewing all available modules

# find /lib/modules/<kernel version>/ -type f -iname '*.o' -or -iname '*.ko'

For instance, to automatically load the 3c59x.o module, edit the kernel-2.6 (or kernel-2.4) file and enter the module name in it.

Code Listing 22: Editing /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6

(Example for 2.6 kernels)
# nano -w /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6


So I added "forcedeth" in that file.

P.S. the command
# find /lib/modules/<kernel version>/ -type f -iname '*.o' -or -iname '*.ko'
generates a lot of pages, so in order to display all of them add | less to the end of it like that:
# find /lib/modules/<kernel version>/ -type f -iname '*.o' -or -iname '*.ko' | less

use the spacebar to view the next page of the listing and type Q to return to the command prompt.