On Mon, Jul 16, 2001 at 12:57:42AM -0400, Evan Flynn wrote: > I tried the Realtek 8139 driver with no parameters and unfortunetely i got > the "device busy" error. Please note that I am INSTALLING Debian and > therefore i can't compile drivers (well maybe) or use kernel 2.4. Well I > compiled the version that came with the card (they only provided source) on > a system with RedHat 6.0 on it, didn't appear to work with Debian though.
The source on the manufacturer disk is likely just a ripoff of work by Donald Becker. He is also being very kind by not protesting against these ripoffs verbosely. Even though the file is worthless in reality, at least the hardware manufacturers can say they have a "linux driver" on their disks, which credits linux (until you try to use their driver). For the real thing, visit http://www.scyld.com/ or see what's in the kernel already. I've never had any problems with these cards, but it may be the case that the currently popular "8139 C" revision of the chip was not supported by the rtl8139 driver in older 2.2 kernels. There are two driver modules for 8139 cards in 2.2.19 at least. They are named "rtl8139", by Donald Becker, and "8139too", forked from the first by Jeff Garzik. I am not sure if both modules are on the Debian installation disk, but you can at least try it. Otherwise, build a newer kernel with rtl8139 or 8139too support enabled and ramdisk and initrd and save the vmlinuz as "linux" to the boot floppy (mount it as type "fat"). Cheers, Joost
