Fedora 1: Network card problem - dhcp / cable modem ISP

From: Arnoud de Geus (Arnoud.de.Geus01_at_chello.nl)
Date: 01/21/04 

Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 18:06:32 GMT

Hi

I have the following problem:

I have a box with 2 ethernet cards (generic 3Com). One card
eth0 for connection to a cable modem and my ISP (dynamic address
via dhcp), and one card eth1 for my internal network via hub. The eth0
network card came with my cable modem. The cable modem can only
interface with this card by probing it's mac address or something
like that. The box is rather old an runs Redhat 9 but works fine.

Both cards are:

eth0 3Com Corporation|3c900B-TPO[Etherlink XL TPO] - ISP
eth1 3Com Corporation|3c905B 100 BaseTX [Cyclone] - internal

both cards use the 3c59x module, a 3Com 3c59x/3c9xx ethernet driver
LK1.1.18-ac 1 July 2002, compiled for Redhat 9 kernel 2.4.20-8.

I upgraded to a new and faster box, and thus moved both ethernet
cards to this box. During this upgrade I also installed Fedora Core 1.
I booted the installation with CD, and installed Fedora using FTP.
During installation the eth0 makes connection with my ISP through
the cable modem just fine, and is assigned IP parameters via dhcp.
The FTP installation is finished, but after the first boot the
trouble begins.

The booting process fails to bring up the eth0 card, so no internet!
Using the Network configuration program and trying to activate the
device results in:

Determining IP information for eth0... failed, no link present. Check Cable?

again both cards use the 3c59x module, a 3Com 3c59x/3c9xx ethernet driver
LK1.1.18-ac 1 July 2002, compiled for Fedora 1 kernel 2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.

First I thought this was some sort of modules problem. But changing eth0
to my internal network (swapping the network cables and giving eth0
a static address) works fine! The device works fine, so no modules problem.
Of course using the cable modem on eth1 doens't work as described above.

Second I thought it could have something to do with the order of the
cards. I swapped the ethernet Cards in the PCI slots (swapping eth0 and
eth1) but this also does not seem to be the resolution.

Using the exact same setup on my new box, and using some sort of
Windows version results in two working cards. Also taking into account
that the FTP installation of Fedora 1 on eth0 works fine can only result
in the conclusion that this really is a linux software (Fedora 1) problem.
What has changed from Redhat 9 to Fedora 1? Looking at the module driver
version: this seems to be the exact same version (although the binary
sizes: Redhat 9: 3c59x.o 40588, Fedora 1: 3c59x.o 41364 do differ
considerably, possibly explained by different compiler versions / swithes
used).

Does anyone seem to have a clue what is going on here, and how this can
be resolved? I did seem to have this problem on my old box on some beta
version of Redhat (8 or 9, if forgot).

Are 3Com and or the 3c59x.o module driver of inferior quality? Does anyone
else has the same kind of problems?

Can one assign a different MAC address to an ethernet card, and what is
the correct way to do this? Some kernel boot parameter, or just the network
configuration utility?

Arnoud.

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