Yesterday d/l'd Slax and burned the cd. Went with SLAX KillBill Edition v 5.1.8.1 .

Loads fine - seems to anyway, from my very limited point of view.
(GX1_man : thanks for recommending it - I'm still playing around with Puppy Linux Live CD too, but this looks more interesting.)

Tried regular boot and slax toram . Both seem to load fine.
Played around some at the command line.
Tried both startx and flux . startx loads KDE , and flux loads Fluxbox.

So far, so good.

I'd like to be able to run Slax, and be able to use the web with it. As I fumble around with it, I'd like to be able to get to the web to search for more info on whatever I'm trying to learn about at the time.

I haven't been able to spend a lot of time on this problem yet, but so far I haven't been able to get connected.
Still looking around and reading, but thought I'd go ahead and post here - in case someone reading this has experience with Slax and can speed me along in the right direction.
Or stop me from beating my head on the wall if it is impossible.

My connection to the internet is via Verizon DSL. Westell 6100 dsl "modem" / router.
Fwiw, it works fine with Win98SE. And with Puppy Linux too.

I'm not near that computer right now.... doing this from memory....

Using KDE - there is a network config tool - it has a pull down menu... nothing was in it, so I typed in eth0, my normal 127.1.1.45 (?) ( I noted it using winipcifg before booting Slax), my gateway, googled to find ip for verizon dns, etc.
Went to the browser and google.com still could not be found.

Ran dmesg | less
searched for eth . Only found as part of other words.
I'm suspecting that the NIC was not found now.
What should I find with dmesg? What should I be looking for?

Next, tried ifconfig.
From the command line, it returned:
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:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)


Nothing about eth0. Should it have?

Next, tried ifconfig eth0 , and it returned an error message
eth0: error fetching interface information: DEVICE not found

I'm guessing that the configuration with the KDE tool that I tried before didn't work, because I was telling it to configure something that - to it - didn't even exist.
I've got to find a way to get the device to be found first - right?

Where do I start?



Also, fwiw - at http://www.slax.org/doc_using_linux_slax.php#network
are some instructions.
I see : "If you are using ADSL then you could try adsl-setup and adsl-start program. "
If adsl-setup and adsl-start are commands, they don't do anything on mine.
I tried find -name adsl from / , and just got returned to the prompt.

Nic is an Encore 10/100m . Model number is ENL832-TX-ICNT.
http://www.encore-usa.com/product.php?id=5&lang

More fwiw: When I first tried Puppy, I didn't try the latest version. Similar problem. It does have a graphic tool that allows user to try different drivers though. Didn't work.
Got advice.... told to get the latest Puppy.
Did that, and it found the nic. Used the tool, and was online in a jiffy.
If I recall, the driver it found/used was named sundance.

When I get back to that computer later, if you need more info, ask/direct me and I'll try to find it.

Thanks


Edit: the command lspci does find the nic.





Did some more reading and DIGGING around....

If one of the lines of info returned by lspci is:
Ethernet Controller: Sundance Technology Inc: Unknown Device 0200 (rev31) ,
is it reasonable to think that the module for this nic is named Sundance?

I found a file named sundance.ko in a directory - sorry, didn't note the path - that was named so that I believed these were driver MODULES. Part of the path name was /driver/net .....

Used this command: modprobe -v sundance
and it appeared to run insmod.
Installed two modules. sundance and mii.
I didn't see anything to make think that there were any errors.

Used lsmod and could see these two modules at the top of the list.

But - ifconfig -a still does not show eth0.
and ifconfig eth0 still reports device not found.

I wonder if I found the right driver.... ?

I wonder what I should do next to solve it.

Please advise.

Thanks


What is the ACTUAL NIC?Quote

What is the actual NIC?

Nic is an Encore 10/100m . Model number is ENL832-TX-ICNT.
http://www.encore-usa.com/product.php?id=5&lang

That seems a pretty esoteric piece of hardware. Do you have a NIC that is a little more mainstream?