interface eth0 is not available

English Network/Internet
1

I have an external hard drive (it fits in a bay in my laptop) with openSUSE 12.1 installed. Nothing I’ve tried so far has gotten it to recognize eth0, which I need to set with a static ip address. I used
/sbin/lspci -nnk | grep -A2 -i net

to get controller information and it returned

00:10.1 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation device [8086:153a] (rev 04)

So something is recognizing the card exists, however, if I try hwinfo, it seems to hang. I tried looking at Network Settings in Yast
and it hangs on the “Read drivers” step. I’ve tried things like getting rid of the 70-persistent-net.rules file and rebooting, plus steps about
configuring the network manually from here.

Any ideas would be appreciated. I’m pretty new to both Linux and networking.

2

Hi
Why not install a later (and supported) version? I would guess the hardware is to new for the kernel in 12.1;
http://cateee.net/lkddb/web-lkddb/E1000E.html

Do you get any output from;


/sbin/modinfo e1000e
3

Even if no driver is present, you’ll get the the chipset details enumerated. You’re using an old (and unsupported version of openSUSE), so the kernel version in use is the likely culprit here. The e1000e driver supports this chipset, so consider upgrading the kernel, or better still the OS.

4

Unfortunately, this isn’t my drive to do upgrades or whatever. I have to try getting some data from it and then return the drive, so I’m kind of limited in what I can do.

I did the /sbin/modinfo e1000e and got the following:

filename: /lib/modules/3.1.10-1-29-default/kernel/drivers/net/e1000e/e1000e.ko
version: 1.4.4.k
license: GPL
description: Intel (R) PRO/1000 Network Driver
…a bunch of aliases …
depends:
vermagic: 3.1.10-1.29-default SMP mod_unload modversions
…a bunch of parm entries…

5

Hi
So in the aliases list do you see the PCI ID v00008086d0000153A?

If so, try (as root user);


modprobe e1000e
lsmod |grep e1000e
hwinfo --netcard
6

The lsmod | grep e1000e returns 222320 0
When I do hwinfo, it seems to dump everything into one line and doesn’t finish up. I tried putting it to a file, but since it doesn’t finish properly, no file is created.

7

Hi
Hmmm, sounds like it could be faulty… Do you have a live cd/dvd/usb device later than 12.1 and boot from that to see if the interface works, no BIOS settings you can tweak?

8

I’m trying to get my hands on a live cd. I’ll try that with it. I’ll take a look at the BIOS but I probably won’t be able to tweak it. Thanks.