1 entry tagged hardware and network

Time to add a second Ethernet card?

My network at home uses what is now old-fashioned coax with BNC connectors. New computers—such as, for example, a visiting iBooks—only have connectors for new-style cat-5e cables. Rather than replace my entire home network, I’m experimenting with a second NIC and a crossover cable. This means powering down my desktop (uptime: up 170 days, 15:55).

Update: some hours later I have managed to get my first card working again, after Red Hat’s auto-configuration clobbered my settings! My attempts to load the module for card #2 so far unsuccessful. I have downloaded a newer kernel (I was running 2.2.12, this is 2.2.22), which is currently compiling. Maybe it will do better. ¶ It has now finished after 15½ minutes. I will not try rebooting until tomorrow, however.

Update (Sunday): Turns out that kernel 2.2.22 hangs on boot-up. Argh. Returned to 2.2.12 for now. On the otherhand, I discovered that make modules modules_install is different from merely make modules_install. It appears that the install target does not imply actually building the modules? Anyway, I did this and I now have an rtl2039.o that can be loaded with modprobe. Alas! trying to bring up the interface complains of a ‘Resource temporarily unavailable’, which I take to mean that the card needs to have an IRQ assigned to it, something that may be doable through the BIOS? Something to try later in the week. I have other things to do today.