nForce Ethernet controller ?

[Bob Nielsen]

On Sat, Jan 29, 2005 at 05:41:43PM +0100, Vincent Trouilliez wrote:
> I have got a MSI "K7N 420 Pro" motherboard. It has the 'nForce' chipset,
> which includes a Ethernet controller.
> 
> Has anyone managed to connect to the internet using a built-in nForce
> Ethernet controller ???
> 
> Mine seems detected properly (lspci, dmesg, gnome's device manager etc),
> but, when I run 'pppoeconf', it will detect 'eth0', but will time out
> when trying to detect the cable modem ! :o(
> 
> If I turn this nForce controller off and replace it with a cheap generic
> '8139' PCI card, pppoeconf works like a charm.
> 
> So I would love to hear from people who happen to also have an nForce
> (one) Ethernet controller....can you connect to your broadband modem
> with it ?? :-/
> 
> Is it just Warty, does Hoary work any better in this department ??
> ISTR that mandrake 9.2 had the same problem, so maybe it's either the
> driver that's dodgy, or my motherboard is faulty ?
> 

In looking at the kernel source, I see that nForce ethernet controllers 
use the reverse-engineered forcedeth driver.  Look at 
/lib/modules/<kernel-version>/kernel/drivers and see if it contains 
forcedeth.ko.  If so, 'modprobe forcedeth' should load the driver.  If 
not, you will either need to recompile your kernel to include this or 
find a kernel image which contains the driver module.  

This module is included in the hoary 2.6.9-1-k7 kernel.  If is not in a
warty kernel, a hoary kernel should work fine for you.

If the module exists, it SHOULD be detected and loaded, but if not 
adding it to /etc/modules should work.

Bob