I have an old Foxconn MB running OpenSUSE 12.3 with kernel 3.7.10-1.45
I am nowhere near an expert when it comes to Linux, very much a newbie. Part of the reason is it runs so darn well I only have to touch my home Linux server every couple of years (!)
Now, I need to disable the internal NIC on the motherboard which is only a 10/100 NIC – and I am going to plug in a TP-LINK 3269 gigabit PCI Ethernet card. The current NIC is bound to something called “eth0” and everything works flawlessly right now. I really don’t want to break anything.
Will this work:
Reboot machine, drop into BIOS and turn internal motherboard NIC off.
Turn machine off and install new PCI Ethernet card.
Boot machine into openSUSE – and…what next? – will it “automatically” find the new NIC and attach it to “eth0” or will I need to dive into some sort of network settings tool to get this set up?
Any pointers if my game plan is wrong would be very appreciated.
The system should automatically detect the card (unless it would need an additional driver) and use default settings (DHCP).
It will probably not be called “eth0” though but rather “eth1”, as an eth0 is already configured.
But you can remove the old config in YaST (Network Devices->Network Settings) and rename the new interface to eth0. Or delete the existing configuration in YaST before you install the card and it should be named eth0 then when you plug it in.
Although the name of the interface should not matter anyway.
If you need some specific configuration (fixed IP address e.g.) you’d have to do that manually again for the new interface.
In that case, maybe copy your old settings beforehand, they should be in /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth0, or you can see them in YaST too.
I have done this on a old desktop (disable internal nic) and use a PCI nic card/YaST2 took care of it.
I also have done it on a from openSUSE 12.X (My main server now 13.1) 3 PCI Nic’s after some thunderstorm and YaST2 took care of it. I was surprising at first when the count railed away eth1, eth2, eth3 and so on. Later on I cleaned up and have only eth0 eth1.
Thanks guys - I finally got to install the new NIC and it did work fine. For some reason I had to do the network config twice, as the network wasn’t working when I first brought the machine up after restarting (and having already set the network config) – it showed two versions of my new NIC on the list and said one of them was “uninstalled”. I had to delete the original one I set up and re-do it…then it seemed to be ok.
