Unable to bring eth0 - etch - 2.6.12.1 default kernel - 3com 3c574 "LAN + 56K PC card - Dell Inspiron 7500.
Recently installed "etch" and had problems with the installer
recognizing/configuring my PC card. Now when I boot into the the new
system ifconfig only lists the loopback interface. "cardctl
ident/info/status" do not seem to indicate a problem with pcmcia..
"ifconfig -a" does list the eth0 interface and "lsmod" indicates that
module 3c574_cs is loaded with a use count of 1. So everything
concerning the card looks ok as far as I can tell - down to the led's on
the nic and the cable modem - but try as I might I am not able to bring
up eth0. An "ifup eth0" results in IRQ 11 being disabled followed by
unsuccessful attempts to obtain a lease from the dhcp server. This goes
on for a while and eventually ends with an "unable to bring up eth0
interface message.
Not sure where I should look. Google does return a few similar cases but
nothing much in the way of a resolution.
An interesting fact is that during phase one of the install (before the
reboot) I was able to bring up the interface: when I got to the
partitioning step I backed out until the main install menu was
displayed.. I manually selected the "configure network" entry and that
did the trick - was able to verify this via ifconfig and a wget of a web
page.. So it looks it does not look like a problem with the 2.6.12.1
kernel proper and it does look like not much is missing.. But due to my
limited knowledge of cable modems & dhcp - not to mention my being
comparatively new to debian - I really have no clue what I should do next.
Would this be some kind of a timing issue with the system trying to
bring up the network before pcmcia/cardmgr has initialized...?
In any event I would much appreciate hearing from anyone who has run
into similar problems with pc card nic's - or more generally anybody who
has any suggestions as to what I coud do to make progress with this
rather frustrating issue.
Thank you.
Chris.
PS. Incidentally I was not aware of the existence of a debian-laptop
list so I initially posted to debian-user - probably accounts for the
fact that my original post did not receive any response.
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