[olug] "plug and play" ethernet cards and linux

[Mat Caughron]

Greetings OLUGroupies all.

This is my first post to the OLUG list.

In my experience, plug and play is a disaster when configuring x86unix
ethernet cards (same experiences with FreeBSD as with Linux) and is best
turned off.

>From the Linux Ethernet How-To:

Some PCI BIOSes may not enable all PCI cards at power-up, especially if
the BIOS option `PNP OS' is enabled. This mis-feature is to support the
current release of Windows which still uses some real-mode drivers. Either
disable this option, or try and upgrade to a newer driver which has the
code to enable
a disabled card.



Problem: The original NE2000 specification (and hence the linux NE2000
driver) does not have support for Plug and Play.

Solution: Use the DOS configuration disk that came with the card to
disable PnP, and to set the card to a specified I/O address and IRQ. Add a
line to
/etc/conf.modules like options ne io=0xNNN where 0xNNN is the hex I/O
address you set the card to. (This assumes you are using a modular driver;
if not then
use an ether=0,0xNNN,eth0 argument at boot). You may also have to enter
the BIOS/CMOS setup and mark the IRQ as Legacy-ISA instead of PnP.
Alternatively,
if you need to leave PnP enabled for compatibility with some other
operating system, then look into the isapnptools package. Try man isapnp
to see if it is already
installed on your system.

There are exceptions, of course, but seems that especially for budget
e'net cards, turning that PnP stuff off is your best bet.

Further details at:
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Ethernet-HOWTO-2.html




Mat




On Tue, 28 Aug 2001, Dave Homan wrote:

> I'm just curious, but Redhat 7.0 is pnp compatible, your bios is more than
> likely pnp compatible (since it's a 166), and the card sure as heck is pnp
> so why do you want to disable the pnp capability on the card?  Have you
> tried it with pnp enabled yet?  If you have and you want to run with it
> disabled, then you'll have to configure the i/o range and the irq just like
> the kind fellow stated below.
>
>
> >From: Jon <thechunk at home.com>
> >Subject: Re: [olug] eth0 question
> >Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 09:03:44 -0500
> >
> >if pnp is disable you probably need to pass setting to module.  You can do
> >that in the /etc/modules.conf file or /etc/conf.modules file.  You should
> >have something that looks like this.  make surethe io is the correct value.
> >alias eth0 <module>
> >options module io=0x300
> >
> >On Tue, Aug 28, 2001 at 06:51:14AM -0500, Tom wrote:
> > > I just installed RH 7.0 and have sound card and printer working fine.
> > > But on load it says Starting eth0 then says Delaying eth0 and fails.
> > > It is a EtherEZ SMC8416T card and from DOS screen I did run utility to
> >disable the PNP.
> > > Any ideas on either problem would be appreciated.  I am running a
> >generic 166 with 64meg ram and 15G HD.
> > >
> > > Thank Tom
>
>
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