Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 11251
NE2000 isn't recognized by installer
Last modified: 2008-05-01 11:37:55 EDT
Back in version 5.0, the ne2000 clone NIC cards were recognized perfectly during installation. In 5.1 through 6.0, they were only recognized when they had IRQ=3. Since 6.1, they are not being recognized at all. Under 6.2, when I tried to have the installer use the ne2000 card, I received the error message: /tmp/ne.o: init _module: Device or resource busy After the installation, if I add the lines: alias eth0 ne options ne io=0x300 then the card is recognized during startup and everything works fine after I manually modify the associated files that would have automatically been set up properly if the card had been recognized. Ed Friedman ed@math.uchicago.edu
hmmm ... were you unable to specify the proper module parameters during the install ...?
did you verify the BIOS settings for your motherboard to ensure that the PnP settings/ISA slot settings were appropriately set ...?
I tried specifying the address (0x300) and the IRQ (3), but I still received the identical error message during installation. The card was set jumperless, not PnP, and post installation, everything worked perfectly after I put the proper lines into /etc/conf.modules The BIOS was set for PNP OS = N, and the ISA slot settings were normal. I am dealing with NE2000 clones here, not "real" NE2000's, but the installation used to work perfectly in older versions of RedHat on the very same machines which now must be configured post-installation.
There are lots of NE2000 variants out there - this may just be something the kernel driver is not handling correctly. Give 7.0 a try and let us know if its better.
Hi Ed, we could not reproduce that behavior here in test (although, given the number of ne2k variants, that certainly doesn't mean your behavior didn't occur :) ) ... we were able to use our ne2k clone after specifying both io addr (0x300) & irq (3) ... it also doesn't help that both the cards & the machines they tend to be installed in are aging, and not always gracefully! :( I'm not able to determine whether you're particular card is flaky, or whether some subset of ne2k clones DO have troubles ...! I would be very interested to know whether you had success with other cards in this machine, and also whether or not you had additional cards of this manufacturer & model, and if they worked for you ... thanks for your report!