evil install results in networking woes

[edpi]

Hello. New guy iso help; here is my sordid tale.

I had two machines. The 1st was running Debian (installed via Knoppix), but suffering from being an old cheap generic, except for the hard drive.

The second was an old Dell box, unused.

The Debian box was dying, so I had the bright(?) idea of pulling its hard drive, and sticking it in the Dell as the primary (and only) drive. Hardware differences you say?

The Dell booted, with some X issues. I resolved those using Knoppix to do the dirty work of configuring XFree86. I booted up with Knoppix, and copied its XFree86 configuration files over the ones on the hard drive. Worked great.

Next I found that the Dell was not connecting to the net; ifconfig does not report anything for eth0. The Dell does have a lan card, and does connect if I boot with Knoppix.

My understanding of networking is next to nil. Is there a way to pull the Knoppix trick again? Is there a set of configuration files I could copy from a running Knoppix over the corresponding files in the hard drive that would restore networking?

Thank you.

[Stephen]

It should be as simple and finding the correct module used when you boot the CD (open a console window and type lsmod and enter key) on the Dell then when you boot the HD in the machine open a console window and use su to become root then modprobe module_needed and /etc/init.d/networking restart to restart the network with the proper module loaded and get an IP. Edit the file /etc/modules and replace the old network module already in there with the new proper one and it will be loaded on the next boot. Or you can mount the HD while still booted from the CD and change the /etc/modules on it then when you reboot the network should come up.

[edpi]

Stephen,
You rule. Your advice was dead on; thank you very much.

While I'm here, let me add that Knoppix is an amazing and groundbreaking piece of work. Mr. Knopper, thank you for sharing it.