Re: [gentoo-user] Interface eth0 does not exist - e1000e/e1000

[covici@ccs.covici.com]

Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>    I've been helping a friend over the phone who's trying to fix a
> networking problem. This machine was built a month ago running
> something like 2.6.39-gentoo-r2. Networking worked great. I do not
> know what driver it was using, but it worked great.
> 
>    Two weeks ago we updated the machine to 3.0-0-gentoo and I think
> networking was working fine however I never logged in and never tested
> the network interface. The owner believes it was working, at least for
> a while, but it isn't now. When we boot now we get the message:
> 
> "Interface eth0 does not exist"
> 
> which typically happens when you don't have the correct driver
> installed. The system is loading the e1000e driver but we're not able
> to start net.eth0.
> 
>    lspci -k says the e1000e driver is in use, and e1000e is in memory.
> 
>    We then tested again with the original 2.6.39 kernel and found that
> even with that kernel, which I absolutely know worked at one time
> because I built the machine over the Internet for him, it no longer
> works. That kernel is also loading e1000e.
> 
>    We then booted from the Gentoo LiveCD and found that the LiveCD is
> also loading e1000e and that with the LiveCD everything is working
> perfectly. I can ssh into the box, he can ping Google. Everything is
> cool with the e1000e driver using the Live CD, but not using the
> kernels we build.
> 
>    At this point I set up the chroot install environment, dropped in
> to build a new kernel. I did a make clean && make && make
> modules_install. Everything built fine. I copied it over to /boot,
> rebooted and still have the same problem. e1000e is loaded but says
> the the interface doesn't exist.
> 
>    The net.eth0 link exists in /etc/init.d, and trying to start
> networking using .etc.init.d/net.eth0 yields the same error.
> 
>    What am I doing wrong here? How come it used to work, and still
> works from the CD, but won't work from his old or new kernels?

I bet udev renamed the device -- check and see if you have eth
anything.  Udev does things like that.

-- 
Your life is like a penny.  You're going to lose it.  The question is:
How do
you spend it?

         John Covici
         covici@ccs.covici.com