[NCLUG] ds: no socket drivers loaded!

[John L. Bass]

Christopher "C.J." Keist <cjay at engr.colostate.edu> writes ...
> No, I didn't touch the kernel at all.  Just installed the driver for the 
> modem (rpm package), instructions said nothing about building a new 
> kernel.  I don't have any PCMCIA support, correct me if I'm wrong, but 
> PCMCIA I thought was only needed for laptops.
> The loading of that driver must of messed up something with startup 
> scripts or something.  Because the network driver is not being loaded 
> even if I boot with my backup kernel, which is suppose to be my safety 
> net when I screw up my default kernel.

Hi,

You didn't provide much help for a systems hack to help you debug. For a
Redhat based system to initialize a network card on boot several things
have to be correct.

	1)  /etc/modules.conf needs to alias the device(s), such as:

		alias eth0 airo
		alias eth1 tulip
		alias eth2 3c59x

	2) in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 needs to be a
	   valid set of defines to be "sourced" by the "ifup" scripts:

		DEVICE=eth0
		BOOTPROTO=none
		IPADDR=192.168.0.1
		NETMASK=255.255.255.0
		BROADCAST=192.168.0.255
		NETWORK=192.168.0.0
		USERCTL=no
		ONBOOT=yes

	   with ONBOOT=yes necessary.

	3) some network card drivers will not properly initialize unless
	   the media is plugged into an active/terminated subnet/hub.

Debugging has several steps, first check /var/log/dmesg and /var/log/messages
for the startup sequence to check logging for the driver and network scripts.
You may find some useful chatter or nothing depending on the driver.

Second check that the driver is loaded and bound to the network using "lsmod"
which besides all the other lines should show the network driver listed in
/etc/modules.conf:

	Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted
	3c59x                  28552   1

Third, if the driver loaded and Used is not zero, you should find the driver
bound to the network stack as eth0 in the kernel with:

	# cat /proc/net/dev
	Inter-|   Receive                                                |  Transmit
	 face |bytes    packets errs drop fifo frame compressed multicast|bytes    packets errs drop fifo colls carrier compressed
	    lo:1474079184 1638417    0    0    0     0          0         0 1474079184 1638417    0    0    0     0       0          0
	  eth0:669562079 6143865    0    0    0     0          0         0 1905925603 3730999    0    0    0     0       0          0

Forth, if this failed, try:

	# ifdown eth0
	# ifup eth0
or
	# sh /etc/init.d/network stop
	# sh /etc/init.d/network start

in some cases, you might have to load the kernel module manually with modprobe

Is this a PCI device? did it register in /proc/pci?

have fun!
John