Installing a NIC (rtl8139) in Debian 2.2r2

[Jason King]

I am either very stupid or quite stupid. :(

I have tried installing debian with 2 NICS so that i can make the box a firewall to share my cable connection. I have the first NIC all ready to go (the private lan nic) its an intel nic that shows up under IFconfig as eth0.

The problem is my second NIC (a cheapie Realtek rtl8139 rev16) wont install. I have ;

1. cat /proc/pci and copied down the nic info (i0=0x6400, irq=10) and it should use the module rtl8139).

2. Tried doing modprobe rtl8139 io=0x6400 irq=10 and nothing happens - it says that the device is busy or in use and that it cant install module.

3. I tried insmod rtl8139 and same error (its busy etc...)

4. When i lsmod (only a few modules show the eexpress (intel NIC) shows but no other NICS.

What am i doing wrong ? This is a bit confusing for me since all the guides on the net seem to cover the netconf tool which is for redhat systems.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. :)

[Jason King]

As an update;

I have re-installed debian (this time i made sure to have a cable that works plugged into my switch :( ).

This time i loaded the eepro 100 mudule (for the intel NIC) and the 8139too module for the Realtec NIC - they both loaded fine. :)

When i load the system and pass ifconfig only eth0 appears ?

I checked /var/log/syslog and the eth1 interface appears and says Realtek 8139 found at this mac address, io etc.

Why doesnt it show up when i ifconfig ? I havent assigned any IP adresses to it (i assigned the ip address for the intel NIC at install).


Any info would be greatly appreciated (as you can see i know nothing about linux). :)

[Mountainman]

IT seems that you know more than you take credit for. The modules thing has confused me forever. Anyway, My suggestion would be to apt-get install linuxconf , that will make managing your install easier, and then try to setup the second nic in the networking section of it. Couldnt hurt to try it. Let me know how it goes.

[Jason King]

Thanks buddy. I will try that.

The debian install to 23MB which aint bad. Its only going to be a firewall/masq/proxy.

I will get back to you. :)

[Jason King]

No luck with that either dewd. I am stooped.

I just need to know how to install two NICS in debian. Does the NIC thats going to be DHCP (cable) need to be plugged into the cable modem - cause at the moemnt its plugged into the switch ?

I know i need to install DHCP - but does the second NIC need an alias ?

Very confused :(

[Jason King]

I know i am one slow dum phuck but i got the issue under control now.

I did the following;

1.Checked /var/log/syslog and found eth1 and eth0 were being found - cool. :)

2. The modules were all correctly loaded.

3. Downloaded dhcpcd.deb and installed that (i uninstalled the normal dhcp package which was chit).

4. Used dhclient and got a DHCP address, then i checked the name server (for Bigpond Australia this is dce-server) and i got a reply.

5. I am now ready to run the authentication client and perform masq, firewall rules etc. (that will be easier hopefully) :)

Linux is hard. :(