Unsupported hardware in NetBSD

**George Harrison** · 08-22-2005

I gave NetBSD 2.0 another try last night and now it seems as though my ethernet card is unsupported. I uninstalled it just a bit ago and now FreeBSD is running sysinstall

Anyone else have this problem? I believe I saw someone else having the same problem too.. I mean, why have 50 different archs that it can run on but it has piss poor hardware support? This is the only OS that has not detected all of my hardware (excluding Peanut Linux, and in that case it was my sound that was unsupported). I use all onboard stuff from Via, I don't understand how every OS has picked up on it and yet an OS that can run on 50+ archs cannot. grrr.. I'm done.

I was really hoping to like NetBSD as I have heard it has an excellent package manager, it's stable and secure, etc. I was planning on making it a webserver. Oh well, FreeBSD is the victor here.

I will say that OpenBSD, which is based upon NetBSD, is quite impressive and I use it today.

**sether** · 08-22-2005

Check the NetBSD supported hardware database:

http://projects.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi

If it's not there, it's unsupported. If it's there, it was not configured properly. ifconfig is the key.

**the0r3tic** · 08-23-2005

Originally Posted by George Harrison

I gave NetBSD 2.0 another try last night and now it seems as though my ethernet card is unsupported. I uninstalled it just a bit ago and now FreeBSD is running sysinstall

Anyone else have this problem? I believe I saw someone else having the same problem too.. I mean, why have 50 different archs that it can run on but it has piss poor hardware support? This is the only OS that has not detected all of my hardware (excluding Peanut Linux, and in that case it was my sound that was unsupported). I use all onboard stuff from Via, I don't understand how every OS has picked up on it and yet an OS that can run on 50+ archs cannot. grrr.. I'm done.

I was really hoping to like NetBSD as I have heard it has an excellent package manager, it's stable and secure, etc. I was planning on making it a webserver. Oh well, FreeBSD is the victor here.

I will say that OpenBSD, which is based upon NetBSD, is quite impressive and I use it today.

I thought I had the same problem, untill I installed netbsd using ftp, and it asked me if I wanted to use the same config it generated from the install on the system. Run dhclient.

**George Harrison** · 09-12-2005

hmm.. well thanks for the replies guys.

Ends up that I was using a pretty dated version of NetBSD (1.6-ish) and with my new Soltek motherboard with onboard Via.. eh, it was just unsupported (confirmed with the link that sether provided, thanks).

I am now downloading 2.0.2 and from what I have seen in the install screenshots there is an option to setup DHCP right in the installer. I'm just a bit worried installing this as the new 2.1 is almost out. Is it pretty easy to upgrade?

**George Harrison** · 09-12-2005

argh, 2.0.2 is installed and it still won't work..

I have tried

Code:

ifconfig eth0

and it comes back and says that eth0 has not yet been configured.. well of course not.. I need to configure it

And I tried running dhclient and it looked like it was working but then said it didn't receive any offers from dhcp. I have edited my /etc/resolv.conf but that doesn't seem to help, I have skimmed the NetBSD handbook, etc. I'm really stuck here. Can I open the kernel up and give myself support for via? That's what I have to do in gentoo, I dunno, it's just a thought.

**onlinebacon** · 09-13-2005

I dont understand, I thought that NetBSD was supposed to be compatible with everything!

**the0r3tic** · 09-13-2005

Originally Posted by onlinebacon

I dont understand, I thought that NetBSD was supposed to be compatible with everything!

It's compatible with _ALOT_ of architectures, not nessercarily hardware though.

**George Harrison** · 09-16-2005

heh, Linux is corrupting me now.. I forgot that there's no such this as eth0 in *BSD.

Bah, Slack 10.2 is going on the slave drive now. The only way I touch NetBSD in anyway is through OpenBSD (think about it).

**onlinebacon** · 09-16-2005

lol george harrison,

Anyway, my mistake above was stuupiden :P

I like freebsd :P

**the0r3tic** · 09-16-2005

Originally Posted by George Harrison

heh, Linux is corrupting me now.. I forgot that there's no such this as eth0 in *BSD.

Bah, Slack 10.2 is going on the slave drive now. The only way I touch NetBSD in anyway is through OpenBSD (think about it).

OpenBSD is a fork from NetBSD but the base system code is all Open code.

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