I installed Mandrake Linux 7.1 on a dual 300MHz computer. I also have another computer having Windows 2000. I have connected both of them using a belkin router. After installing, I set the IP address for the Linux machine using the "ifconfig eth0 192.168.2.100 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.2.155" . Afthe rthis both the computers were connected(I ran a FTP server on the windows 2000 machine and I was able to access the FTP server from the linux machine). After this I rebooted the linux machine and I noticed that the Ip address was gone. I tried to set the IP address to 192.168.2.100 using the same ifconfig command, but it keeps saying eth0 device not found. I used LinuxConf program and it shows that the ethernet card is installed properly. What may the problem be?

It sounds as though the module for your card is not loaded on boot. Try running lsmod first, make a note of what is loaded, then run draknet again (or whatever it was you installed your card with) and get it working (if you can!). Do another lsmod to find which module is being loaded and then add a modprobe modulename command to your startup scripts so that it loads when booting.

Thank you 3Dave, I am new to Linux, so if you can give me the exact comman to run, I will run them , note down the results and post them here.

Here is the output of lsmod command Module                  Size  Used by nls_iso8859-1           2280   1  (autoclean) nls_cp437               3784   1  (autoclean) vfat                   11196   1  (autoclean) fat                    33408   1  (autoclean) [vfat] soundcore               4388   0  (autoclean) (unused) usb-ohci               15084   0  (unused) autofs                  9736   1  (autoclean) keybdev                 1836   0  (unused) usbkbd                  2324   0  (unused) input                   3040   0  [keybdev usbkbd] usb-storage            10220   0  (unused) usbcore                28164   0  [usb-ohci usbkbd usb-storage] supermount             15208   2  (autoclean) ncr53c8xx              56384   3  Also, in the /var/log/messages file I saw this boot up message.. Nov 25 00:40:05 shibuhost network: Setting network parameters succeeded Nov 25 00:40:05 shibuhost network: Bringing up interface lo succeeded Nov 25 00:40:05 shibuhost network: Enabling IPv4 packet forwarding succeeded Nov 25 00:40:05 shibuhost insmod: Note: /etc/conf.modules is more recent than /lib/modules/2.2.15-4mdksmp/modules.dep <27>Nov 25 00:40:05 insmod: /lib/modules/2.2.15-4mdksmp/net/tlan.o: invalid parameter parm_irq Nov 25 00:40:05 shibuhost ifup: Delaying eth0 initialization. Nov 25 00:40:05 shibuhost network: Bringing up interface eth0 failed I can cut and paste contents of other configuration files if required...

conf.modules has this... alias scsi_hostadapter1 usb-storage post-install usb-storage modprobe usbkbd; modprobe keybdev alias scsi_hostadapter ncr53c8xx alias parport_lowlevel parport_pc pre-install plip modprobe parport_pc ; echo 7 > /proc/parport/0/irq alias block-major-11 scsi_hostadapter alias usb-interface usb-ohci pre-install pcmcia_core /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia start post-install supermount modprobe scsi_hostadapter ; modprobe scsi_hostadapter1 options tlan irq=10,11 io=0x300,0x320 alias eth0 tlan ifcfg-eth0 file has the following lines inside it... DEVICE="eth0" IPADDR="192.168.2.100" NETMASK="255.255.255.0" ONBOOT="yes" BOOTPROTO="none" IPXNETNUM_802_2="" IPXPRIMARY_802_2="no" IPXACTIVE_802_2="no" IPXNETNUM_802_3="" IPXPRIMARY_802_3="no" IPXACTIVE_802_3="no" IPXNETNUM_ETHERII="" IPXPRIMARY_ETHERII="no" IPXACTIVE_ETHERII="no" IPXNETNUM_SNAP="" IPXPRIMARY_SNAP="no" IPXACTIVE_SNAP="no" "network" file has the following NETWORKING=yes FORWARD_IPV4="yes" HOSTNAME="shibuhost.shibudomain" DOMAINNAME=shibudomain GATEWAY="192.168.2.1" GATEWAYDEV="eth0"

Also, the ifconfig only shows 127.0.0.1 lo interface only. I am able to ping to 127.0.0.1 . Does that mean the ethernet card driver is installed and loaded fine?

I think your problem lies in conf.modules. Pingin 127.0.0.1 just means that your loopback networking is OK. As root try: # modprobe tlan If that works you should be able to do an lsmod and see the tlan module loaded. "ifconfig eth0 up" should now work. If all the above works OK, I would suggest commenting out the line "options tlan irq=10,11 io=0x300,0x320" by putting a ";" infront of it, like the line above. Using the tlan driver I'm guessing that your NIC is either PCI or onboard. You usually only need to pass parameters like IRQ etc when loading ISA modules.