let's see if i can make a long story short. for the sake of sheer experimentation, i wanted to see if i could *totally* remove all networking configuration from a gateway laptop running F8 x86_64, then use system-config-network (henceforth, s-c-n) to recreate it from scratch. the underlying hardware (from lspci): ... 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8036 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 10) ... 08:07.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02) ... so i went into s-c-n, removed all traces of network configuration under both the Devices and Hardware tabs, saved that, removed the lines from /etc/modprobe.conf: alias eth0 sky2 (um ... i think that's what it was) alias wlan0 b43 (added previously by me for wireless) i then unloaded the above modules from the system, and verified that the directory /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices is utterly empty. so ... should i be able to put stuff back? if i invoke s-c-n again, i'm not surprised to see both the Devices and Hardware tabs totally empty. so how could i recreate the wired interface eth0? if i try to add a new device of type "Ethernet Connection", i'm given only a choice of "Other Ethernet Card", and i don't see a corresponding entry for that ethernet controller. should i? or am i going about this the wrong way? what would be the correct recipe to restore my eth0 interface? i have just as little success trying to restore the wlan0 wireless interface, *until* i add the line alias wlan0 b43 back to /etc/modprobe.conf, at which point restoring the wireless interface via s-c-n is a piece of cake (it even handles the access point's WEP). so wireless is back, but still no wired interface eth0, although i'm puzzled that the directory /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices now contains three files: ifcfg-eth0 ifcfg-wlan0 keys-wlan0 and ifcfg-eth0 contains: # Intel Corporation PRO/100 VE Network Connection DEVICE=eth0 BOOTPROTO=dhcp HWADDR=00:E0:B8:BF:7C:3F ONBOOT=yes TYPE=Ethernet so what have i messed up? is there, in fact, any way to restore eth0? thanks. rday -- ======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA Home page: http://crashcourse.ca Fedora Cookbook: http://crashcourse.ca/wiki/index.php/Fedora_Cookbook ========================================================================
