On Tue, 4 Jan 2000, Guyren G Howe wrote: : I am diving head first into Linux, but have done very little work with Unix : in my career except a tiny but at University.
Welcome - this is the place to be. : My immediate problem is that I can't get network cards working under my : Corel linux (or my sound card -- an inland Sound Card PCI 128 Wave Table -- : but I'm prepared to leave that one for later). : : I have bought two cards now. Both have had me download .c versions of the : tulip drivers, and neither of them would compile for my Debian variant O/S. [ snip ] : I need to know what to do with the tulip.c file I got from Bay Networks for : my Netgear FA 310TX cards (I have two, so I can run this thing as a NAT : machine). These are really good cards, IMO. They should work fine with the stock tulip driver on the drivers disk (I don't know for sure which kernel version Corel installs; I know the Debian slink disks work fine). They also work flawlessly with 2.2.13 which is a really nice kernel and is what I use for my masquerading proxy (a p100 with two Netgear FA310TX cards :) Save the Netgear diskettes - they're almost always error free and make good candidates for rescue/driver disks when performing future installs :) [ snip ] : - do I compile for a module or a monolithic kernel? Always use modules when you can. If your ethernet card does bomb, you can (sometimes) remove the driver module and then insert it again. I've never had to do this with a tulip card but I have had to do this with an Intel EtherExpressPro100B! It's trivial to use both cards with the module, and it's often a pain with a monolithic driver. I like to switch to the 2nd VC and type `dmesg' to verify that both cards were detected after I install the module during the install (here's hoping the Corel install lets you get at a shell during install). If the cards AREN'T detected when you install the module, you've probably got an interrupt problem. I've seen this on one machine, an IBM PC Server 300 (dual 233 P II). Weird. Finally, note that the install will only prompt you to setup the FIRST NIC detected; you set up the second NIC after you've completed the initial install. People here can help you with that if you run out of patience. [ snip kernel compilation questions ] It's a pain since you don't yet have connectivity, but the best way to compile kernels with debian is to use the `kernel-package' package. Finally, potato is now frozen; it's not perfect but it's fairly stable AND it offers a ton of new features. I don't know how smoothly Corel upgrades to potato; perhaps you're willing to be a test case :) I found IP masq trivial to set up under potato (embarrassingly easy). Hope this helps! -- Nathan Norman MidcoNet 410 South Phillips Avenue Sioux Falls, SD mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.midco.net finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for PGP Key: (0xA33B86E9)
