Bootup docked/undocked issue

I have been trying to set up my Dell Latitude CPi laptop with RedHat 8.0. It works great but there is something that is just bugging me and I *KNOW* that there is a way to fix it, I just don't know what it is at the moment. Here's the situation:

when I boot undocked, I have a pcmcia ethernet/modem card that gets loaded by cardmgr. It correctly determines the network and attaches itself to eth0 since it's the only network device. when I boot docked, I still have the pcmcia card that's not connected now, cause I also have another NIC in the docking station that is physically connected to the net. When I get to the login, something is hosed cause I don't have network connection established... ifconfig show that eth1 (the pcmcia card) is active but not eth0... simply running /etc/init.d/network restart solves the issue, but I don't want to have to restart the network every time I boot docked!

BTW, I disabled the pcmcia startup cause I thought that was the problem but it has nothing to do with it. :(

Any help is greatly appreciated...

Have you checked the logs for hints?

Yes, I actually took a copy from a undocked run and a docked run and did comparisons but it didn't help me. I didn't see anything really different and nothing really out of the ordinary. It's almost like when it's docked it can't see the docked components when it tries to start the network.


I really don't know what to look for... but here are the relivent boot messages from a docked boot notice there isn't an eth0: line which I think is a problem:

PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:0d.0
3c59x: Donald Becker and others. www.scyld.com/network/vortex.html
00:0d.0: 3Com PCI 3c905 Boomerang 100baseTx at 0xec80. Vers LK1.1.18-ac
divert: allocating divert_blk for eth0

...some other stuff

divert: allocating divert_blk for eth1
eth1: 3Com 3c574 at io 0x300, irq 3, hw_addr 00:00:86:3A:52:1A.
ASIC rev 1, 64K FIFO split 1:1 Rx:Tx, autoselect MII interface.

Doesn't it say anything at boot up when it tries to activate eth0? Anyway, see if the module for the docking station's NIC is loaded after a docked boot.

Yes, it says
Bringing up loopback interface: succeeded
Bringing up interface eth0: succeeded

but nothing else... when I ./network restart, it says lots more:

network: Bringing up loopback interface: succeeded
ifup:
ifup: Determining IP information for eth0...
dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
dhclient: DHCPACK from <ip address removed>
dhclient: bound to <ip address removed> -- renewal in 114555 seconds.
ifup: done.
network: Bringing up interface eth0: succeeded"



Both modules (3c59x and 3c574_cs) are loaded when I first login:
3c574_cs 12580 1
3c59x 30640 0 (unused)

This seems wrong, but after I do the ./network restart it's fine:
3c574_cs 12580 0
3c59x 30640 1


What I did notice when I was poking around is that /etc/modules.conf has this alias:
alias eth1 3c59x

but when I remove that then eth0 wont come up at all... it seems weird cause I thought that that modules was associated to eth0 not eth1, because ifconfig shows this tied to eth0 afer the ./network restart.

You might not know it, but the modules aren't really tied to an interface at all. Interface names are tied to modules to load, but when they actually load, they just use a device name of eth + <the first unused number>. Alias the devices correctly:

Code:

---

alias eth0 3c59x
alias eth1 3c574_cs

---

That just might fix it, since the source of the problem can be that they are loaded in the wrong order.

This does fix the problem, but creates another issue. When I boot undocked now, the ./network command fails, but then the cardmgr starts the pcmcia card and more or less restarts the network... it just alarmed me to see [ FAILED ] in the boot sequence. The on screen message basically said that it couldn't find the driver for the docked NIC card and so it couldn't bring up the network. At least now it doesn't require any manual intervention to get the system into a working state.

Thanks a lot Dolda!