[SWLUG] Latest on the connection saga

[Justin Mitchell]

On Sun, 2003-04-13 at 19:52, Rhys Sage wrote:
> As far as the Linux box is concerned, the Ethernet card says "Linux"
> on the box but doesn't have a Linux driver on the CD. A download from
> the site actually had Linux instructions:
A note saying 'supports Linux' usual means the other way around, ie that
linux already has a driver for it so they didnt need to ship one.
Which in this case is true, the RTL 8139 based ethernet cards get
everywhere cos they are cheap.

>  
>    1. Check the driver file "/lib/modules/2.2.XX/net/rtl8139.o".
>       Where the XX is the version number of the latest kernel.

As others have mentioned, there have been changes to that chip and
driver over time, the current driver, and the one most likely to work
with your card is the 8139too.o

Any normal (we can only assume SME is a bit broken) distribution would
have automatically detected that ether card and setup the drivers for
you.

You can check if you already have a driver loaded by looking at the
output of /sbin/lsmod.  otherwise you can pretty much follow those
instructions you have, just replacing with 8139too.o where mentioned.

> But... I don't have anything called vi.
Ye gods, vi is THE standard text editor. Not terrible friendly for
beginners, but very powerful, and its the one thing you should be
guaranteed to find on any unix like system.