how to bring up a plug-and-play Ethernet card in Linux?

[lars at larsshack.org (Lars Kellogg-Stedman)]

> When I load ne.o, I get a message on the screen, acknowledging that
> the kernel recognizes the Ethernet card there.  However, if I type
> ifconfig, I still only see the lo (loopback) device, and no Ethernet.

This is normal behavior.  An unconfigured ethernet interface will not show 
in the output from a simple 'ifconfig'.  If you type 'ifconfig -a' you
will see *all* available interfaces, including unconfigured ones.

If that works, you'll want to make sure that /etc/conf.modules has the
appropriate entry for your ethernet card...something like this:

  alias eth0 ne

This allows you to type "ifup eth0" and have the ne.o module loaded
automatically (this presumes that you have correctly set up
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 correctly, either manually or
with a tool such as linuxconf).

> Likewise, there's no eth0 file under /dev.

There will never be an eth0 file under /dev.  Network devices don't get
device nodes in /dev.  In general, nothing in a typical Linux distribution
is going to make frequent updates to /dev.

-- Lars

-- 
Lars Kellogg-Stedman <lars at larsshack.org> --> http://www.larsshack.org/

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