NVidia Linux Ethernet Woes

[stelleg151]

So as the title makes clear, I am new at Linux. I have the most recent Fedora release (I think kernel 2.6.*?)

Anyways, I have a Gigabyte Geforce6100 board, with onboard Gigabit Ethernet. At first while looking through the driver CD I thought the ethernet controller was the RealTec 8139, so I tried

"modprobe 8139"

This got me nothing, and when I would try and active eth0 it would tell me that the hardware was not there. After messing with that for a while, I found out through "lspci" that my ethernet controller was actually NVidia's own MCP51. I found a file on the driver CD that is supposedly in Binary, but I think its written for DOS. It is a .nic file, and the network driver files in the bin folder are .ko files. I have been looking at a way to somehow put the binary .nic file into a ko files, but somehow I feel that wont work. They really sould give better driver support for Network controllers with cd's, because without a working network controller you cant get online (duh).

So I really need to get that network going, right now I am on another PC running Fedora, and doing fine with its PCI card. I tried switiching the pci card into the non-working computer, and something was wrong because everything slowed down to almost a standstill.

Any advice would be greatly appriciated, I really want to get linux working on that chipset because next year I would like to run a server off of it.

Thanks.

 

[sourceninja]

I think that the drive you want is forcedeth. Try loading that. It should come with Fedora. If not I know ubuntu supports the onboard nvidia nics.

 

[daniel49]

nevermind I read it wrong

 

[stelleg151]

Yeah thanks for the replies guys, I checked it out and I needed nvnet driver from NVidia. I read on a forum that a lot of people were having troubles with it, but mine is working (typing from that machine now). Thank god, havent checked the Audio yet (came in a package with NVnet) and havent tried installing NVidia drivers, but I am ecstatic that I am finally online after all that work. Already much more satisfying than windows : ).

 

[bersl2]

Originally posted by: stelleg151
Yeah thanks for the replies guys, I checked it out and I needed nvnet driver from NVidia. I read on a forum that a lot of people were having troubles with it, but mine is working (typing from that machine now). Thank god, havent checked the Audio yet (came in a package with NVnet) and havent tried installing NVidia drivers, but I am ecstatic that I am finally online after all that work. Already much more satisfying than windows : ).

Maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't listen to NVidia in this instance. Generally, the NVnet binary driver is looked down upon, because the necessary reverse engineering has been done (no thanks to NVidia for being so obstinate) for everything on the NForce[1-4], and you really should use the in-kernel drivers where possible.

 

[xtknight]

Yup, modprobe forcedeth. After that command my CK804 (nForce4) Ethernet was detected just fine and designated an eth number.