linux-image-2.6.20-1-686 and sky2 module

[Freddy Freeloader]

I have been working on a Toshiba Tecra A4-S211 and have run across a 
problem in relation to the linux-image package in the title of this post 
and the Marvell 88E8036 NIC.  The sky2 module is loaded according to 
lsmod, the system thinks the ethernet port is active as the lights 
actually blink on the physical port itself, but there isn't actually any 
traffic going in or out of the ethernet port. 

If I run ifup the dhcp discover packets are sent according to the 
messages printed in the bash shell, but nothing is actually sent over 
the network.  The dhcp server sees no packets (I am sniffing traffice on 
it using Wireshark during the test), and after the default number of 
timeouts is reached the dhcp client says there was no response.  Running 
ifup at this point I receive a message saying that eth1 is already 
configured.  Running ifdown I get errors saying the network is not 
reachable.

If I boot back into 2.6.18-4-686 the card works normally and acquires an 
IP address from the dhcp server. 

The entire installation is Etch except for the 2.6.20-1-686 kernel as I 
installed it to try to solve the ACPI problems and ATA hardware 
recognition problems I was having with the 2.6.18-4-686 kernel.  It does 
solve the problem of the time outs in recognizing one of the ATA devices 
and the shutdown problems I was having, but no networking capability at 
all is rather severe price to pay for fixing those to irritating but 
relatively minor annoyances.

Has anyone else seen this? 

Oh, one possible wild card in the issue is I have vmware-server 
installed on this machine and use bridged networking with it.  I've 
Googled to see if there are any known reasons why this would create a 
networking problem for the host if I hadn't reconfigured vmware 
networking for this kernel yet but couldn't find anything on it. 


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