[PLUG] Network failure, different kernels of the same revision.

[Jeme A Brelin]

I have a Dell PowerEdge 4400 dual Xeon 800 with a pile of RAM.

It has an onboard eepro100 and a PCI rtl8139.

I installed with the Debian 3.0 bf2.4 CD.  I built the system running the
kernel from that release.

I realized that this was a single-proc kernel and figured I should
definitely go SMP on this little thing.

So, first I downloaded the kernel-source-2.4.18 package and configured and
built the kernel using make-kpkg.  That seemed to work smoothly.  Then I
did a dpkg -i to install my new kernel.

Odd thing is, when I rebooted the system, the network was unavailable.  I
double-checked that the drivers had picked up the two interfaces and that
the scripts had configured them properly.  Sure thing... there they
were.  I checked the physical connections and the routing table.  All
good.  No different than before.

Yet, I get no connectivity out.

Then I back-reved to the bf2.4 kernel (which wasn't a backrev at all
because it's still a 2.4.18 kernel) and everything worked again.

So then I tried apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.18-686-smp.  The install
went fine and I set up the initrd thingie in lilo and we were all ready to
go.

Rebooted to find I was in the same situation as my custom kernel:  Network
devices are present and configured, the routes are accurate, but I have no
network connectivity.

Again, back to bf2.4 kernel and everything works.

I'm at the end of my rope.  What am I forgetting?

Thanks.
J.
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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