[GLLUG] monilithic kernel (debian 3.0) and ethernet devices

[Paul Donahue]

So for security reasons i've compiled my IPSec enabled (freeswan) and Masquerading enabled kernel monolithically (word?). However i'm haveing a very hard time making my ethernet devices work "properly"

I have one PCI 3c905 (Vortex) card that autodetects but comes up at 10Mbit (I want 100FDX) and an ISA 3c509 (Etherlink 3 Combo) that does not come up at all. I found a page that described that if i appended "ether=0,0,eth1" to my boot line that the 3c509 would come up. Well it did and it didn't. It recognized on boot and I could see it with ifconfig. however I could not get it to actually transmit or receive packets. I could do a self ping but that was going back to localhost.

So basically, I'm stupid when it comes to passing arguments to "modules" that are actually part of a monolithic kernel. I have no clue what the above "ether" line is actually doing and could not find any doc on it. Basically it's the magic line at this point. If the kernel would have these as modules the options i would want to pass would be something like the following:


modprobe 3c509 io=300 irq=11
modprobe 3c59x debug=1, options=4

any enlightenment (no not the window manager) :) would be appreciated.
TIA



Paul Donahue
Computer Scientist
Computer/Network Technician
Michigan State University
http://www.pdonahue.com/
ICQ: 1624723   Phone: 517-204-6047