[bencpht]

i am extremely new to linux
specs

red hat linux 8
athlon xp 1700
msi k7n420 pro mobo
onboard Nforce sound
onboard NIC
onboard vga (not being used)
msi geforce 4 ti4200
256mb pc2100 ddr
lg dvd/cdrw combo (seen as generic)
wd caviar 40gb ata100

I can't find linux drivers for the NIC or sound. I'm using generic geforce 4 drivers for vga, but can't find anything compatible with onboard sound or NIC. Linux drivers are not on the mobo's installation cd, nor are they available on msi's website. Any ideas?

[codejockey]

I can't find linux drivers for the NIC or sound.

It's likely that your RedHat installation already knows about your NIC. Try the following command: cat /proc/interrupts and see if the output includes an entry for eth0. If so, this is your NIC, and it's likely that it's being recognized but just needs to be configured. Configuration is a matter of setting up dhcp (if you are using dynamic IP addresses) or assigning a static IP. I believe RedHat provides scripts that can help with this.

You usually have to reconfigure your kernel to support your sound card, especially if you are using an older or more exotic sound card. Reconfiguring the kernel is not difficult but can be intimidating if you've never done it before. Since you are using on-board sound, you may need to initialize with the (usually, Windoze) drivers supplied with your motherboard, and then boot linux. This means that you will need to set up your system to use loadlin, so that you will boot into Windoze (so everything is initialized, and then run loadlin to boot into Linux). Only experimenting can tell you if Linux will recognize your on-board sound directly.

Note that you can find lots of information about these and other topics in /usr/doc/Linux-HOWTOs and /usr/doc/Linux-mini-HOWTOs on your system.

Hope this helps.

[bencpht]

hey thanks

[codejockey]

You're welcome! -- and let us know what happens.

[bencpht]

whoops,
RedHat couldn't find the NIC, and another source referred me to nvidia's drivers from their site. After following their instructions, I managed to muck things up worse. I couln't boot without using the floppy. I reinstalled redhat, and this time put grub on the MBR. Now when I boot up and choose redhat I get an error.

error 28: selected item cannot fit into memory

[bencpht]

I've failed installing redhat 8.0 to dual-boot correctly 3 times now.
I have winxp on 1st drive, and want redhat on 2nd drive.

attempt #:
1. GRUB on master boot record of 1st drive = error 28:
selected item cannot fit into memory (upper memory?)

2. GRUB on 1st partition of 2nd drive = no GRUB on boot, need
to boot off linux startup disk to run linux

3. LILO on master boot record = system hang after POST,
no options, no prompt, no error saying no OS

I just used fdisk/mbr to remove LILO and at least now I can still run winXP. Anyone know how to do this correctly?