Detecting my Ethernet Card

[Linkooseven]

Hi,

I am using the KNOPPIX Linux off the boot CD. It works fine except it cant seem to detect my Ethernet Card.

Any help on getting it to work? Or maybe some general information (I'm new to Linux)

Thanks,
~Matt

[baldyeti]

In a console / terminal session, type "sudo lspci -v" . If the output mentions an ethernet device (btw - you did not mention which one you're supposed to be using), then type "sudo netcardconfig".

[Linkooseven]

It's an Integrated nVidia Ethernet Card... I'll try what you said, although when I typed netcardconfig by itself it said it didnt find a card.

[Linkooseven]

I got it to say it knows a cards there, but when I run the config program it says "NO SUPPORTED CARDS FOUND." Does that mean Linux dont support my ethernet card? In which case...sucks...lol.

[Stephen]

I got it to say it knows a cards there, but when I run the config program it says "NO SUPPORTED CARDS FOUND." Does that mean Linux dont support my ethernet card? In which case...sucks...lol.
No that means that the driver for the card is not included in Knoppix you can try Overclockix (http://overclockix.octeams.com/) it has support for the card included.

[arkaine23]

Thanks, Steven. Overclockix has the nvnet driver you need Linkooseven, and so does Morphix as far as I know.

While its based on an older version of knoppix (about 4 months old as of this post), others have remarked that Overclockix somehow does do a few things better than the current version. But some things are broken such as msn and yahoo chat protocols in gaim, because gaim is not up-to-date. For hdd-installing this doesn't matter too much. For operating live off the CD, it can be a bummer. I am planning some new and exotic remasters- one clusterknoppix-based and another gentoo-based, and these will be up-to-date and should also feature Overclockix's usual style and extra drivers.

[Linkooseven]

Thanks for the help guys! I'm using the Live Boot CD as I post this. I've been playing around with Linux (if you havent guessed--im a linux newbie) and I like it quite a bit. I dont know which version I'd go with if I acually installed it on my Hard Drive though.

I'm going to wait until I get a new HDD to install Linux though, as I dont know the first thing about partitioning and the like. Could I set a Duel Boot System with Win XP and Linux on 2 seperate HDD's?

Also, while im thinking of it, Overclock cant read my sound card...stupid Integrated POS >_<. I hope if I install a version of linux on my HDD, that I acually get one that reads all my stuff. hehe.

Anyway, im going to play around with this more. Thanks again.

[Stephen]

Thanks for the help guys! I'm using the Live Boot CD as I post this. I've been playing around with Linux (if you havent guessed--im a linux newbie) and I like it quite a bit. I dont know which version I'd go with if I acually installed it on my Hard Drive though.

I'm going to wait until I get a new HDD to install Linux though, as I dont know the first thing about partitioning and the like. Could I set a Duel Boot System with Win XP and Linux on 2 seperate HDD's?

Also, while im thinking of it, Overclock cant read my sound card...stupid Integrated POS >_<. I hope if I install a version of linux on my HDD, that I acually get one that reads all my stuff. hehe.

Anyway, im going to play around with this more. Thanks again.
You can easily dual boot with 2 drives in the system just don't make the / partition 10 or 20gb like I have seen some people do the most you should ever need is 4 to 6gb. For your onboard sound if Arkaine23 included alsa on the CD you should be able to boot with the alsa cheat code (http://www.knoppix.net/docs/index.php/CheatCodes) and get sound or once booted from the CD then in a console window (clam shell icon on the taskbar) sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-autoconfig. To check your hardware go to http://www.google.com/linux and just put the name of your hardware in the search box along with linux and debian and you will get some kind of idea of how it works or you could post some specs here I'm sure more than a few of us have run into it before.

[Linkooseven]

I still cant get my sound to work >_<

About the partitions, my current HDD (the one i'd end up using for Linux) is 20GB in size. The HDD I want to buy to use Windows XP on is going to be much bigger. How would I do this? Just install Linux on the 20GB harddrive, and Win XP on the new HDD and then set up the duel boot system? So I could pick which HDD to start up with at boot? I really dont understand things about partions and other things, so any help would be appriciated.

Thanks in advance.

[Stephen]

I still cant get my sound to work >_<

About the partitions, my current HDD (the one i'd end up using for Linux) is 20GB in size. The HDD I want to buy to use Windows XP on is going to be much bigger. How would I do this? Just install Linux on the 20GB harddrive, and Win XP on the new HDD and then set up the duel boot system? So I could pick which HDD to start up with at boot? I really dont understand things about partions and other things, so any help would be appriciated.

Thanks in advance.

Well the best way would be get the new HD and install it as the master (first) drive on the ide bus and set the old one to slave on that cable or put it as the master on the second ide bus if you do not already have a cdrom there (no messing with jumpers that way). Partition your new drive with about 10-15gb for XP as the primary ( C: ) drive that should be more than enough for the bloatware if you need more make it bigger but not the whole drive unless you format it with fat32 instead of the default ntfs and make a second partition on the new drive ( which would be your D: after you have formatted the second hard drive and installed linux until then it would show up as E: with the second hard drive being D: confusing I know gotta love dos ) and format it fat32 so you can easily share the files between xp and linux as well as have the ability to write to it from linux you can not safely do this with ntfs partitions. Then install the XP on the new HD go though the configuration and get everything setup then copy the data you want from the old drive that you set up as the second drive in the machine then format and install the linux/knoppix on the second drive. The install program will ask you if you want to install lilo to the MBR and if you say yes then you will have a lilo boot screen which will allow you to boot either xp or linux/knoppix.

With you saying that you do not know much about pattitioning I take it you have never used the dos fdisk program to partition a drive before am I correct in this assumption? BTW what kind of sound card is it?

[Linkooseven]

So, your basically tell me take the new drive and make 2 partitions with it. One partition for the acual OS as Fat32 and then a 2nd one as NTFS for all my other stuff? The reason I want a bigger HDD in the first place is because I am a gamer, and my current 20GB HDD is getting filled...

Then take my old (currently used) 20GB HDD and format it as FAT32 for Linux/Knoppix? Man, im so confused...its not even funny. Your right, i've never used FDISK.

How would I do that inside my computer? I have 2 CD drives, and both my IDE spots are taken. I know some IDE cables have 2 spots, so what would that mean? I know my CD drives are both on one cable, and the one drive is set to MASTER and the other SLAVE. How would I do this on my Hard Drive? Use the same one cable but both spots on it, then set one HDD to MASTER (the bigger new one) and the old (current) HDD to SLAVE?

Sorry if I sound a bit stupid >_<.

[arkaine23]

Fdisk- fdisk is a utility you'll find on a windows bootdisk. Try going to bootdisk.com and making a win98 bootdisk. Boot from teh floppy and at the prompt, type "fdisk"

This will give you a program to partiton your hdd. You should not actually make any changes to your current HDD unless you are prepared to lose the data. However, you'll find that fdisk is very similar to the program cfdisk which is often used by Linux installers. So the idea is to get familiar with it....


Master/Slave- The HDD's have a jumper on the back. Set both to Cable Select or CS. Put the big one on the ned of the cable (master) and put the little one on the middle of the cable (Slave). Make sure to use the cable that comes with your new drive. It's possible your old cable is rated for slower transfer speeds and only has 40 wires instead of the current 80 wire cables.


Partitions- Install Windows XP to your new HDD. So leave the old one (20GB) unplugged to avoid confusion. Windows XP has its partioning tool during the install.

I'd do it like this:

make a partition that's 15000 - 20000 MB
make another partition that uses the remaining space
Install windows to the first partition and choose to format it as NTFS.
Reboot into windows and go to my computer. Right-click D: and format it as FAT32.

Now power off, plug your old HDD in as the slave, boot of your linux CD(s). Depending on what flavor you use, it may use a different partitioning tool. Knoppix uses cfdisk and also installs to a single partition by default. For any partitioning for linux, you'll be dealing with /dev/hdb (the slave hard drive), not /dev/hda (the master).

So, make a partition that's maybe 500mb - 1GB in size. This will be for swap or virtual memory.
Make a second that uses the rest of the 20GB drive. You can choose what filesystem to use, but most will recommend either ext3 or reiserfs.
Install linux to the second partition you made for it.

Speicifcs for cfdisk- Choose type on the first partition and hit enter a couple of times. This will make it into a linux swap drive. Choose the bootable option for the second partition. Write the changes and quit.

The knoppix installer is fairly intuitive and its a pretty good distro to get started on because its easy to setup. If you try another distro, redhat/fedora, mandrake, and suse are all good choices.


The reason you made D: FAT32 is that Linux will be able to use it and so will windows, so any files in there are accessible to both OS's. Linux will be able to read files from your C:, but not write files to that drive (because its NTFS).

[Linkooseven]

That made sense, only thing I didnt understand was the whole "Swap" partition thing.

How come I should save that 500MB or 1GB as "swap/virtual mem" drive? What's it for?

EDIT: Stupid me, I just remembered what virtual memory was >_<, wonder why I didnt at first.

Also, once everything is installed correctly, will I be able to choose which OS to start up from when my computer boots up?

Thanks again, for everything.

[arkaine23]

Yes. You will install a bootloader application, depending on the distro of linux you install. There are 2 common ones- grub and lilo. These pop up a window before your machine boots and give you a choice between windows and Linux (and any other OS's you have installed). After maybe 10 seconds it will time-out and boot the default OS.

Knoppix specific- Knoppix will install Lilo. Linux will be the default OS. It's not too hard to reconfigure Lilo to make Windows the default OS if you so desire.

[Linkooseven]

I'm thinking of going to either Knoppix or Mandrake. Does Mandrake have a bootloader application?