eth0 has gone tits up?

[ZiaTioN]

Ok it appears I have a similar problem to this thread: viewtopic.php?t=1166

However mine did not start when I initially installed Fedora Core 1 but happened just now. Oh that is right after initial install I had an issue with Fedora and my 3com NIC cards (I have the 3c905 100BaseTX Boomerang NIC cards) but after some research I discoverd that the Kudzu process hosed up card recognition on startup. I did a simple "chkconfig kudzu off" and rebooted and everything worked fine since then.

I procedded to download the newest (at that time) 2.4.x kernel (2.4.26) and recompiled for IPv6 support. Today I rack mounted some 2621XM Cisco routers and made them IPv6 compliant and setup a successfull test network and then dropped my 2 Fedora Core 1 boxes on the routers. After changing the ifcfg-eth0 file to have a static IPv6 address they worked fine. I was able to ping6 my routers interface and after a simple tweak to enable IPv6 rip on the routers I was able to ping across different 64 bit prefixes.

Now I installed a rack mounted ServSwitch to administer both boxes via a single monitor, keyboard and mouse. While doing this I unplugged the cat5 cable to one of my boxes to route some video cable around so the install would be pleasing to the eyes as well but after I plugged the cable back in the interface was not up. I tried an "ifup eth0" and get the famous error: "interface eth0 not found 3c59x eth0 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization".

Now this is very weird to me so I rebooted and the system errored on startup because it could not find eth0. So now I go to my second machine and unplug the cross over cable from box one and plug it into box 2 and I get the same error. This is very weird because they both worked like 5 minutes before all this. I changed the monitor, keyboard and mouse back to a direct connect (like that would have anything to do with it) and got the same error. This was the only thing that has changed.

I am really at a loss for words here. Any ideas?

I have searched online in bug reports some but only found reports about Fedora Core 2 and some other brand card.

Edit:
Well just for kicks I rebooted back into my IPv4 kernel on the same system and the ethernet interface 0 came up just fine, even with an IPv6 address. I am really confused now because I was under the impression that under Fedora Core 1 you had to recompile the kernel and enable IPv6 support like I did in the kernel I rebuilt. This however does not seem to be the case because now for some reason when I boot into my IPv4 kernel (2.4.22) the interface comes up fine and once again I have complete network connectivity.

I know Fedora Core 2 comes already IPv6 enables but was almost positive Fedora Core 1 did not. Anyway I think I waisted an entire day downloading installing and re-compiling two kernels for IPv6 support when it appears it was not needed.

[Void Main]

Heh heh, some days just go like that. :) So basically everything is cool with the stock FC1 kernel? You are way ahead of me with the IPv6 stuff. I have been putting it off for some time now, is it time to start learning it?

[ZiaTioN]

Yeah it appears that the regular Fedora Core 1 kernel (not sure about stock kernel but a non re-compiled kernel works) supports IPv6 connectivity. Now I still had to enable IPv6 support system wide for all interfaces by adding the following entries to /etc/sysconfig/network:

NETWORKING_IPV6=yes
IPV6INIT=yes

I also added it locally in ifcfg-eth0 for good measure.

ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=static
HWADDRR=xx:xx:xx:xx:...
IPV6INIT=yes
IPV6ADDR=xxxx:xxxx:xxxx::1

I am not sure if the kernel will support IPv6 applications yet or not. It should but maybe that is what the kernel re-compilation was required for. Tommorrow I plan on starting on that by setting up Apache first then DNS6 and so-on.

Once we get our HP rack mounted server in I will load VLC and start unicasting and multicasting video from it to the 2 clients. If I get Apache up tommorrow I will put it to the test with some Sprirent test gear (the Avalanche and Reflector). After that I want to hammer the lower layers with the Adtech and see where it breaks.

As far as time to start learning it I would say yes if you have the resources and time. I actually had some issues today figuring out the IP scheme because I am still in a world of v4 with subnets, arp tables, dhcp, NAT etc.. None of that exists in v6. LOL...