[CentOS] st1000spex ethernet card and centos 6.2

Mon May 21 14:23:58 UTC 2012
Gregory P. Ennis <PoMec at PoMec.Net>

On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 8:39 AM, Gregory P. Ennis <PoMec at pomec.net> wrote:

> It is interesting in that the nic interface on the mother board is
> listed as :
> Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit
>
> The nic interface on the mother board works fine.  Based on this I would
> have expected the st1000spex to work perfectly.  The mmi entry is listed
> as R8169 for lsmod output, I am not really sure what this means.
>
> Greg
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> OK, I do have lspci on this system;  I am going to it down and put the
> st1000spex back in the slot, and will send the lspci out put after I
> reboot.

The best way to identify your network device is to get the
Vendor:Device ID pairing. Please see the ELRepo FAQ #4 for details:

http://elrepo.org/tiki/FAQ

Akemi
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I have not found a solution, and in fact have made things worse.  

This machine is a Gateway SX2370, and I am about to conclude there is a
bios problem.  I am now unable to boot the machine when I have the
st1000spex in the pci-e slot.  I can boot the machine when the on-board
nic is disabled with the st1000spex in place, but when I try to boot
with both I do not even get the bios screen.  

This has me stumped for now

Greg

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Everyone,

I logged on to the Gateway.com website and connected to their support
chat and was told that the Gateway SX2370 would not function with two or
more nic cards.  I find that hard to believe, but I am making no
progress getting the bios to identify a second ethernet card.  At this
point I will probably turn this machine back to Fry's for a different
model.

Greg

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Everyone,

I finally figured out a fix to this problem.  I had the StarTech
ST1000SPEX gigabit Ethernet tested in a microsoft machine and they
worked fine, but every time I tried to add them in a new Centos 6.2
install the machine would even boot after the second time of trying to
boot.   I thought this may have been a problem with the bios if the
Gateway computer I was using so I tried a new install with an HP what
appeared to me to be a different bios.  Unfortunately, the result was
the same.  

On a fluke of a last resort, a give up attempt, I purchased another
manufacturer's card from TrendNet and everything worked as it was
supposed to work.  The chipset was the same "RTL8111/8168B" for both the
TrendNet card and teh StarTech card.  

I am not sure what caused the problem, but I wanted to report on the
list that I had a great deal of difficulty with the StarTech ST1000SPEX
card with a Gateway, and HP machine.  

Greg Ennis