> > > My eventual workaround consisted of "ifconfig eth0 down; > > > ifconfig eth0 up". Does this start it working for you? > > > > This makes it work, but it is not a solution for me. The card > > is going to be installed in an embedded system where the user > > will not be able to issue commands. Thus, it needs to work > > automatically. Let me clarify the above statement: doing "ifconfig eth0 down; ifconfig eth0 up" only helps _after_ the cable is plugged in and the other end of the link is up. It doesn't do anything useful if the other end of the link is not up yet. > I don't understand... This obviously isn't fixing the real > problem, but as you seem to have control of the hardware, it should be > easy for you to insert "ifconfig eth0 down;ifconfig eth0 up" in > /sbin/ifup-local on Red Hat boxes or /etc/network/interfaces on Debian > boxes or similar, unless you are shipping the hardware without software. Here's the situation: The NIC is installed in a 'black box' embedded system. There is no keyboard/video console. The user can turn the thing on and off and plug and unplug the network cable at will. If the user turns the box on with the network cable unplugged or with the other end of the link down, then doing "ifconfig eth0 down; ifconfig eth0 up" on bootup won't help anything, because the driver will still not detect when the cable is plugged in. Doing "ifconfig eth0 down; ifconfig eth0 up" only helps _after_ the cable is plugged in and the other end of the link is active, but I don't have any way of knowing when this happens. The user interface to the box is over the network, so obviously there is no way to ask the user to tell the box when the cable is plugged in. The only way to get it to work is to require the cable to be plugged in and the other end of the link to be active when the unit is powered on. But wait, it gets worse. What happens when two of these boxes are networked together? Box A won't come up unless box B is up first, but box B won't come up unless box A is up first. See the problem? Anthony J. Battersby Cybernetics - : send the line "unsubscribe linux-net" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
