3C509 ethernet card on Hoary Hedgehog

David Wittenberg dkw at cs.brandeis.edu
Mon May 2 02:40:24 UTC 2005


Thanks for the very quick (and correct) reply.   A few notes:
/etc/modules.conf does not exist on my (straight out of the box) Hoary
Hedgehog system.  I made the change to /etc/modules and that was
enough.   The ifup command gave a warning that /etc/resolv.con didn't
exist, so it couldn't chown or chmod it, but the file was created
(owned by root, protection 644).

I'll put a note on the supported hardware wiki that this card works.
Thanks again for the help.

On Mon, May 02, 2005 at 10:07:48AM +1000, James Gray wrote:
> On Mon, 2 May 2005 06:53 am, David Wittenberg wrote:
> > I just installed Hoary Hedgehog on an old system, which was working
> > when I got it.  The network card is the ancient and honorable 3Com
> > Etherlink III 3C 509TP  (note this is not a PCI card.)  When I do a
> > standard install, it does not recognize the card.  I added the line
> > 3c509
> > to /etc/modules and network settings now says "The interface eth0 is
> > not configured".  Without that line in /etc/modules, network settings
> > says nothing about an ethernet connection.
> >
> > How can I configure the ethernet connection?
... 
> Can't help you with the GUI-based tools.  I do this stuff from the command 
> line.  If you can drive a text editor (xemacs, nedit, pico, vi - anything) 
> you'll be fine.  There's no fancy command line fru-fru for this :)
> 
> Being an ISA card, the kernelhas no way of probing for IRQ's and memory 
> address for the card.  Best thing to do, if download the 3Com configuration 
> tool, set the card up and make a note of the base memory address and IRQ.  
> I found the setup utility here (google "3C509 ISA configuration ~utility" 
> and 2nd hit):
> http://support.3com.com/infodeli/tools/nic/3c509/3c5096.1.htm
> 
> You need to make sure the kernel is "addressing" the card correctly.  On my 
> firewall (Debian Woody...but same in Ubuntu AFAICT) I have the following 
> lines added
> 
> /etc/modules:
> 3c509
> 
> /etc/modules.conf:
> options 3c509 irq=10  # didn't need to specify the base I/O address
> 
> You shouldn't need to reboot to activate these changes in Linux (naturally 
> you'll need to rebot to run the config tool etc).  Simply doing a "sudo 
> modprobe 3c509" to load the module is all that is required.  If the module 
> loads, but there's still no "eth0", just unload the module (sudo modprobe 
> -r 3c509) and edit the modules.conf again.  Rinse and repeat until 
> "ifconfig -a" shows an "eth0".
> 
> Now that you've got the NIC setup and the kernel module configured properly, 
> you need to configure "eth0".  "man interfaces" is your friend here.  The 
> network config for all interfaces is done in /etc/network/interfaces (well 
> most interfaces - ppp etc have their own config).
> 
> For a single NIC being set up via DHCP you can get away with a very simple 
> addition to the /etc/network/interfaces file:
> iface eth0 inet dhcp
> 
> then add "eth0" to the "auto" line:
> auto lo eth0
> 
> If you need to configure a static IP the "iface eth0" stanza needs to 
> resemble this:
> iface eth0 inet static
>         address 192.168.0.10
>         gateway 192.168.0.1
>         netmask 255.255.255.0    # optional - see "man interfaces"
>         broadcast 192.168.0.255  # optional - see "man interfaces"
>         network 192.168.0.0      # optional - see "man interfaces"
> 
> same deal witht the "auto" line though.
> 
> Once the file has been edited, and the kernel has loaded the module for the 
> 3Com card correctly, you should be able to simply bring the interface up:
> sudo ifup eth0
> 
> ...and that's it.
> 
> Other's may be able to point you to some GUI-based tools, but the command 
> line's you need are only (prefix each with "sudo"):
> 1. modprobe 3c509  (and maybe "modprobe -r 3c509)
> 2. ifconfig -a
> 3. ifup eth0
> 
> Everything else can be done with *any* standard text editor (GUI or 
> "text-based" - whatever you're comfy with).  BTW - you'll need to be root 
> to edit the files too: "sudo <text-editor>" should be all that's required.
> 
> HTH - cheers,
> 
> James
> -- 
> Hanson's Treatment of Time:
> 	There are never enough hours in a day, but always too many days
> before Saturday.



-- 
--David Wittenberg
dkw at cs.brandeis.edu




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