kernel 2.4.22-1.2097, winbond-840 and 8139too, more issues related to network cards

[Joel Barrios]

Yup. More annoyances related to network cards.

After upgrading to latest rawhide packages, it solved a kernel oops my
three machines suffered(!) since 2.2.22-93 while rebooting or shutting
down. That made me happy.

I tested kernel-2.4.22-1.2097 in three different machines. The machine
with the most issues has two network cards, a Winbond W89C840 (eth0) and
a D-Link RTL_8129 (eth1).

00:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Winbond Electronics Corp W89C840
00:0d.0 Ethernet controller: D-Link System Inc RTL8139 Ethernet (rev 10)

* 8139too does not loaded *

After upgrading and rebooting Kudzu detected my D-Link RTL_8129 (eth1)
was no more, I let it erase it. The strange thing was that the
winbond-840 module, the one from the first ethernet card, didn't load
and the 8139too did and took on the wrong interface, the eth0 instead of
the eth1. The eth1 did not started because the RTL-8139 took on the
eth0. 

* How I solved it? *

I edited /etc/sysconfig/hwconf and erased both the entries for the
Winbond and RTL-8139. Then run again kudzu an let it add the entries
again, but avoiding to configure with 'netconfig'.

Then I had too stop eth0 interface and load manually the winbond-840
module, then add the 'HWADDR=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx' parameter to ifcfg-eth0
and ifcfg-eth1 to tie each card to the correct interface and then do
'service network restart'.

After a reboot, everything is Ok again, but the system takes a lot to
boot because there is a annoying modules dependencies calculation each
time it boots. Is this really necessary?

Joel Barrios D.
Linux Para Todos
http://www.linuxparatodos.net/