This is related to my earlier post on CentOS 5.4 installation on Dell Latitude E 6420.
The installation of CentOS 5.4 went smooth. Once installed I realised that my ethernet controller was not detected correctly. Having a laptop and not being connected is worthless. The output of the lspci command says it all.
------- lspci --------
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Unknown device 0104 (rev 09)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Unknown device 0101 (rev 09)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Unknown device 1c3a (rev 04)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Unknown device 1502 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Unknown device 1c2d (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Unknown device 1c20 (rev 04)
................
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Luckily, mine was a dual boot machine. I booted using the other OS(Windows 7 Professional) to find out the Ethernet controller on my machine. I had Intel 82579 Ethernet Controller and e1000e linux base driver was the one I needed. The README txt inside the tar archive had all the details. I just installed it and rebooted my machine.
Voila! I am connected to my LAN.
To check my network connection i executed 'dmesg | grep e1000e'.
Later after upgrading to CentOS 5.7 the 'lspci' command gave me this output.
To check my network connection i executed 'dmesg | grep e1000e'.
--------[raghu@raghu-ti8105 ~]$ dmesg | grep e1000
e1000e 0000:00:19.0: Using NUMA node 0 for memory allocations
e1000e 0000:00:19.0: eth0: (PCI Express:2.5GT/s:Width x1) 5c:26:0a:6b:06:81
e1000e 0000:00:19.0: eth0: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection
e1000e 0000:00:19.0: eth0: MAC: 11, PHY: 11, PBA No: 3041FF-0FF
e1000e: eth1 NIC Link is Up 100 Mbps Half Duplex, Flow Control: Rx/Tx
e1000e 0000:00:19.0: eth1: 10/100 speed: disabling TSO
[raghu@raghu-ti8105 ~]$-------
Later after upgrading to CentOS 5.7 the 'lspci' command gave me this output.
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[root@raghu-ti8105 net]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family HECI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced ..............---------
