Topic: Adding a 3rd NIC

[Kai Harrekilde-Petersen]

I'm trying to add a 3rd NIC to cater for a second internal LAN segment (actually, a link to a WLAN Access Point) on my SME 5.6U4 system.

Current setup:
eth0: RTL8139C card, internal segment to a 5-port 10/100M switch)
eth1: DEC Tulip card, external segment to ADSL router/bridge.

When I added the 3rd NIC, also an RTL8139 card, the external link stopped working, because the new NIC placed itself as eth1, not eth2 (this can be fixed with boot-time options, IIRC).

Looking around in both documentation and scripts, it appear that 3 NICs/ 2 internal segments is not a supported configuration.

Have anyone successfully added a 3rd NIC to their system, and if so, what needs to be done (besides making sure that the External port points to the right ethernet adapter)?

TIA,

Kai

[Kelvin]

Hi Kai,

Have a look at this :-

http://www.e-smith.org/docs/howto/contrib/net_card.html

And see if it will do the job.

Kelvin

[Kai Harrekilde-Petersen]

Hi Kevin,

It _reasonable_ fits the bill. I did two more things:
1) Created a template for /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth2 based on the ifcfg-eth0 scripts.
2) Adding (by hand) the lines "LocalNetwork2=192.168.1.1" and "LocalNetmask2=255.255.255.0" to /home/e-smith/configuration.
   (Yeah, I know doing that is dangerous, but I have found that it's often easier than going to the server-manager or the console programs).

At this point, I need to test that the system comes back up right without and then with the 3rd NIC. I'll post my results later.

Thanks for the pointer.


Kai

[Reinhold]

Kai,

Your cumbersome nic-order is most easily fixed by shuffling cards/slots and/or modifying bios irq settings ...(afaik .-)
...most likely the new card was put in the wrong slot and got assigned the lowest irq.

As to your success I'd like to know your current status

Reinhold

[Kai Harrekilde-Petersen]

Reinhold,

I never installed the 3rd NIC. I attached the AP to my 5port switch instead (this is slightly less secure, though).

As to shuffling slots/irqs, that's not going to work: the kernel initializes one driver at a time, and each driver will initialize all cards that it can handle. Hence, you need to specify to the driver which ethX'es it should attach the NICs to.

At least it used to do that, the last time I looked (around 2½ years ago).


Kai

[Reinhold]

Hi Kai,

To bad you use your access point outside the box.
For various reasons I will need to install a pci-wlan card AP in a box soon.

As to the remainder: Not sure what you mean..
eth0 and eth1 will be assigned in the order that the cards are found at boot !
Of course if you want the card at 0x300 to be eth0 and the card at 0x280 to be eth1 then you could use LILO: linux ether=5,0x300,eth0 ether=15,0x280,eth1 or whatever you prefer .-)

Regards