# Guess Config

## senfo

Are there any utilities out there for making a best guess for hardware kernel configuration based on the hardware that you have? I have been unable to get my NIC to work and I'm starting to run out of ideas. I even went the brute force method and enabled all network cards and it still doesn't work, yet it worked fine during the install. Starting to think I'm missing some bus configuration setting, or something.

lspci output:

```
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX Host bridge (AGP disabled) (rev 03)

00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 01)

00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)

00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02)

00:08.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. 86c764/765 [Trio32/64/64V+]

00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21140 [FasterNet] (rev 20)
```

Last edited by senfo on Sun Oct 11, 2009 3:39 pm; edited 2 times in total

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## NeddySeagoon

senfo,

See ths thread or post your lspci output so we can see what hardware you have.

It may not be a kernel issue at all. Does the interface appear in

```
ifconfig -a
```

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## senfo

 *NeddySeagoon wrote:*   

> It may not be a kernel issue at all. Does the interface appear in
> 
> ```
> ifconfig -a
> ```
> ...

 

Sorry about that, forgot to post the lspci output (added to original post). But I only see the loopback device.

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## NeddySeagoon

senfo,

You confirm its a kernel issue. Your 

```
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Digital Equipment Corporation DECchip 21140 [FasterNet] (rev 20)
```

 needs the Tulip driver. Tulip is a whole family of chips.

Under 

```
 │ │    [*]   "Tulip" family network device support  --->  
```

You need something like

```
  │ │    --- "Tulip" family network device support                       │ │  

  │ │    < >   Early DECchip Tulip (dc2104x) PCI support (EXPERIMENTAL) (│ │  

  │ │    <M>   DECchip Tulip (dc2114x) PCI support                       │ │  

  │ │    [ ]     New bus configuration (EXPERIMENTAL) (NEW)              │ │  

  │ │    [ ]     Use PCI shared mem for NIC registers (NEW)              │ │  

  │ │    [ ]     Use RX polling (NAPI) (NEW)                             │ │  

  │ │    < >   Generic DECchip & DIGITAL EtherWORKS PCI/EISA (NEW)       │ │  

  │ │    < >   Winbond W89c840 Ethernet support (NEW)                    │ │  

  │ │    < >   Davicom DM910x/DM980x support (NEW)                       │ │  

  │ │    < >   ULi M526x controller support (NEW) 
```

The options 

```
  │ │    [ ]     New bus configuration (EXPERIMENTAL) (NEW)              │ │  

  │ │    [ ]     Use PCI shared mem for NIC registers (NEW)              │ │  

  │ │    [ ]     Use RX polling (NAPI) (NEW)       
```

may be useful to you or they may stop the device working altogether.

Make it work first, play with the options later

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## senfo

NeddySeagoon,

Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately, I already have the Tulip driver configured exactly as you have pasted. I'm not sure if this is useful, but the Gentoo system is hosted in a VPC (Microsoft Virtual PC) on a Windows 7 host. The actual physical device is an Intel 82566DC-2 Gigabit NIC. For what it's worth, however, an Ubuntu system I have configured on the same machine also uses the Tulip driver. Based on the information I pasted, the only thing I could figure is that it was the ISA bridge (again, it's interesting to point out that there are physically no ISA slots on this machine). Could it possibly be that?

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## senfo

I figured it out. Something strange happened to grub and I was booting an old version of the kernel, each time.

Thank you for your help.

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