network problem -- searched forums, but found no answer

storkk

this is probably a really simple problem, but here goes anyways:

here is the initial error message on boot
* Bringing eth0 up...
dhcpcd[6451]: dhcpStart: ioctl SIOCGIFHWADDR: No such device
* Failed to bring eth0 up [!!]
*ERROR: Problem starting needed services.
"netmount" was not started"

of course, ifconfig -a shows only lo

yes, the correct driver is compiled into kernel (i.e. not module)..
everything was working before we had a black-out, and then kernel was borked... booted from livecd, mounted fs's, recompiled kernel, and ended up having to re-emerge lilo..

since then everything works just fine, EXCEPT the damn network... any help would be really, really appreciated. i'm not a total newbie, and i managed to get everything installed from stage 1 with no probs, but i'm not by any means totally linux-literate yet.

by the way, i have a 3com 3c59x (i think is the model #), and it's dhcp... i've checked the config files i know about and everything looks good.

aja · Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2003 2:02 am Post subject:

Forgive if you have already done this:

#1 - Did you search on "SIOCGIFHWADDR"? There seem to be a lot of pertinent hits there. (The next two queries were gleaned from them)

#2 - Did you "make clean" before recompiling your kernel? Did you check that your kernel config still had the proper modules being built-in/created?

#3 - Are services loading in the proper order?

storkk · Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2003 2:08 am Post subject:

i did a

storkk · Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2003 5:23 am Post subject: fixed!!

for the benefit of anybody out there searching for a solution when none of the others listed online worked:
apparently, the problem was with messed up kernel sources....

boot with livecd, emerge -u <linux sources of your choice>, fix the symlink /usr/src/linux to point to new sources, recompile kernel, copy new kernel to /boot, run lilo.

now everything works. (made the instructions as verbose as possible, to help people like me.

miez

Hi,
i encountered a similar problem when i tried to build a
SMP kernel _after_ building an uniprocessor kernel.
It seems that sometimes "make clean" isn't clean enough.
The solution is to use "make mrproper".
Beware that "make mrproper" will delete your .config file.
If you have an working .config file in an recent sourcetree,
save it in your homedirectory as linux-<version>.config or
similar, make mr proper. copy it back as .config and run
"make oldconfig" to reuse your configuration or run
"make menuconfig" to select just some changes.

regards, miez