[PLUG] Ethernet Activation Question

Fedor G. Pikus fedorp at wv.mentorg.com
Mon Dec 23 01:31:03 UTC 2002


One passes parameter to the kernel at boot.
I've only done it in a PC which had two cards of the same make, the
parameter there was something like this:
ether=5,0x220,eth0 ether=3,0x280,eth1
so you tell the kernel which one is eth0 and which is eth1 by IRQ, not by
card model (I don't know if you can tie eth0 to the card model or not,
does not seem to be any place for it in the syntax of ether option).
The simplest way to find the IRQ and IO address is to boot the kernel
without thethe parameters, run ifconfig and see what you have there, it's
under Interrupt: and Base address:.
Of course if cards get moved around (or on PCI bus IRQs get reassigned)
you're kind of screwed, so I suggest keeping an entry in lilo to boot the
kernel without these options (just in case probing the old IRQ under new
configuration hangs the kernel). With GRUB it's less of a problem because
you can edit its bool lines duiring boot.


On Mon, 23 Dec 2002, Jeme A Brelin wrote:
> This reminds me of a question related to a problem I had several months
> ago which was resolved without ever answering the question.  (How's that
> grammar, eh?)
>
> The question was:
>
> How does one determine order of ethernet devices (eth0, eth1,...) when the
> ethernet drivers are compiled into the kernel?
>
> J.
>

-- 
                                  Fedor G. Pikus
Mentor Graphics Corporation         | Phone: (503) 685-4857
8405 SW Boeckman Road               | FAX:   (503) 685-1239
Wilsonville, Oregon 97070           | http://www.pikus.net/~pikus/




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