Network device eth0 is currently not present

[amenbrother]

Well, I'm trying to breathe some new life into my 400MHz Celeron machine with this snappy little Linux distro called Vector Linux.  First off, I'm impressed that I was able to get it installed (version 5.8 - standard) - not many of the other distros that I tried were successful at all.
One major stumbling block I'm running into is getting my internet connection up and running.  Now, I was able to connect to the internet with this machine when running a couple of live-cd distros (DSL and Puppy).  I'm having one heck of a time trying to get it to work with Vector.  I'm relatively new to Linux, so that's part of my problem.
Here's my setup.  DSL modem plugs into a DHCP-enabled router, which then plugs into my machine.  During the install of Vector, I got to the "SET NETWORK METHOD" screen and was given the following message,"Network device eth0 is currently not present.  If you are going to add it later using PCMCIA, hotplug or wireless devices, then you may continue to choose DHCP, STATIC or PROBE connection method.  Otherwise, you should choose NONE.  Please make your selection:"  I chose DHCP, but was very confused as to why I received this message.  The rest of the install succeeded (or at least it seems that way); however, I cannot connect to the internet.

Here's a snippet of the output from lspci:
01:0c.0 Ethernet controller: C-Link System Inc RTL8139 Ethernet (rev 10)

and ifconfig gives me:
lo       Link encap:Local Loopback
         inet addr:127.0.0.1   Mask:255.0.0.0
         UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436  Metric:1
         RX packets:18 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
         TX packets:18 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
         collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
         RX bytes:1260 (1.2 KiB) TX bytes:1260 (1.2 KiB)

and that's it.  No eth0....nothing.  Also, under /dev, there is no eth* listed there, either.

Any help that you could provide will be greatly appreciated.

[lagagnon]

that is rather strange. Post the output of "dmesg | grep eth0" . Also, the output of "cat /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1". You might also want to just try using VASM, SUPER, NETCONF.

[amenbrother]

Hi lagagnon,
I have done some playing around in VASM a little bit and have gone into the NETWORK -> NETCONF option, and now I don't know if I've made things worse.  Now when I go through the steps in AUTOCONFIG, I get to the "SET NETWORK METHOD" screen, but instead of telling me that eth0 is currently not present, now it says that dummy0 is currently not present.

dmesg lists nothing about eth0 nor dummy0.

Here's what I've got in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1:
## The settings
DEVICE='dummy0'
DHCP='yes'
IPADDR='127.0.0.1'
NETMASK='255.255.255.0'
GATEWAY=''
PROBE='no'

## The script
. /etc/rc.d/functions-network "$@"


Thanks.

[lagagnon]

dmesg lists nothing about eth0 nor dummy0.

That is weird. If dmesg is not seeing eth0 it means the kernel does not see or recognize your NIC card - but then that does not jive with the output of lspci which does seem to recognize the card. Please post the output of "lsmod" and we can see whether a module has been loaded for your NIC. Are you absolutely certain that card works fine with a Linux Live CD such as Ubutnu, Knoppix or SLAX? Try one of those (preferably SLAX) to see if you can connect and if it recognizes the ethernet card. If not, there is something wrong with the NIC. I suggest taking your computer apart and cleaning the contacts of the NIC and reseating it.

[amenbrother]

....and it gets even weirder still....
I'm currently typing this reply from the machine that is in question.  Right now, I'm running a live CD of MEPIS-antiX.  I was also successful with running Xubuntu and getting online.

....and now, the kicker....
Back in Vector, lsmod gives me no output.  It just lists the column headers (Module, Size, Used By), then gives me a prompt.

Thanks.

[lagagnon]

Back in Vector, lsmod gives me no output.  It just lists the column headers (Module, Size, Used By), then gives me a prompt.

If that is the case there is a serious problem with your VL installation and I would suggest:
1) double checking the original VL CD with MD5SUM
2) reload VL overtop of your previous VL partitions.

Did you get anything funny going on during install - errors, or weird behaviour, or did you inadvertantly press the return key too fast and by pass some of the install steps???

[amenbrother]

Well, I checked my CD and everything checked out alright, so I went ahead and re-installed.  Last time when I installed, I did skip loading LILO (I was hoping to eventually use GRUB).  This time, I decided to use LILO.  Now when I boot up, I choose either "linux" or "linux-gui" from the LILO boot menu, and then I see the text-based login screens pop up briefly, but then my monitor goes black and eventually goes into power-saver mode.  It doesn't flash a "Frequency Out of Range" message, or anything like that.  I've received this same result with both the "linux" option and the "linux-gui" option in LILO.  I haven't tried the "linux-tui" option yet.  I will try that tonight.  Also, I was able to find a couple of posts in this forum about monitors going black, so I'll play around with some of those suggestions as well.  If all of that fails, I suppose I'll try another re-install without LILO and use all of the same options from my original install (if I can remember them all).  Thankfully, the VL install process is pretty quick, easy, and straight-forward.  Now, if only I could get it to work! 
Thanks again for your time and suggestions!