5.2 Ethernet Card

As of Linux kernel 2.4.20, the driver for the ethernet card is included and therefore, no extra packaged need to be installed. When configuring the kernel, you must select the EtherExpressPro/100 support (e100, Alternate Intel driver) driver, within the Ethernet (10 or 100Mbit) menu, which is a submenu of Network device support. Upon rebooting, after the kernel compile, Linux will pick up the ethernet card:

e100: selftest OK.
e100: eth0: Intel(R) PRO/100 VE Network Connection
  Mem:0xd0204000  IRQ:9  Speed:0 Mbps  Dx:N/A
  Hardware receive checksums enabled

This section is only for those that are configuring a kernel prior to 2.4.20:

When Linux was installed on the laptop, I tried to hook it up to my internal network at home. I noticed that the kernel picked up the card as an Intel EtherExpress PRO/100 PCI card, and therefore, used the eepro100 driver for the card.

Things worked fine for a couple of minutes, but then my network connection would suddenly die. The logs kept reporting time-out errors. It seems that Linux does not like the sleep mode feature of the e100 card, which is present in the laptopts.

There are two methods which will get your ethernet card working perfectly. Which one you choose is your preference.

Intel has released some Linux drivers for the e100 card and they works perfectly. Download the Intel e100 driver and install it:

$ tar zxvf e100-1.8.x
$ cd e100-1.8.x/src
$ make 
$ su
# make install

The install script will install the newly compiled driver to your kernel's module directory. You may activate the card by:

/sbin/insmod e100

You may even add:

alias eth0 e100

in your /etc/modules.conf file.

(Debian users: Don't edit /etc/modules.conf directly. Add those lines to /etc/modutils/ethernet and run update-modules.)

The only downside to this is that you will have to re-compile the driver each time you boot up with a new kernel, but maybe sometime soon the eepro100 driver will work for the e100 card.

Another method, which some may prefer, is to shut off the sleep mode for the ethernet card. Then, the regular eepro100 kernel driver will work. To do this, you have to boot up the machine without configuring the network, and then run eepro100-diag, using the -G0 -www flags.