When I try and enter my network details going via webmin (rather than MCC) it shows the card (eth0) as a device to activate on boot time (but not in the devices
activated now). When I reboot it doesn't activate. If I then add it to
the devices activated now (eth0, 192.168.0.5, 255.255.255.0) and click on
create it adds it with status up - and i can ping it and get a reply -
hurrah!! However when i then click "apply configuration" it takes it out of
devices activated and I can no longer ping it. :-(

why is this happening??

Ross

Would you reboot (so that the device is not activated) and then type 'dmesg' into a terminal and post the result?

This should show whatever error message is preventing the device from activating during the boot sequence as it is supposed to.

hello motub. Wasn't sure which part of the message that you would be interested in so am posting it all.

cheers, Ross

.Linux version 2.4.22-10mdk (nplanel@no.mandrakesoft.com) (gcc version 3.3.1 (Mandrake Linux 9.2 3.3.1-2mdk)) #1 Thu Sep 18 12:30:58 CEST 2003
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 0000000006000000 (usable)
BIOS-e820: 00000000fffc0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
96MB LOWMEM available.
ACPI: have wakeup address 0xc0001000
On node 0 totalpages: 24576
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 20480 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
DMI not present.
ACPI: Unable to locate RSDP
Building zonelist for node : 0
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=linux ro root=305 devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda6
No local APIC present or hardware disabled
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 149.693 MHz processor.
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 298.18 BogoMIPS
Memory: 93312k/98304k available (1508k kernel code, 4604k reserved, -1961k data, 156k init, 0k highmem, 0k BadRAM)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Intel Pentium with F0 0F bug - workaround enabled.
CPU: After generic, caps: 008001bf 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Common caps: 008001bf 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Intel Pentium MMX stepping 04
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: none
ACPI: Subsystem revision 20030813
ACPI: Interpreter disabled.
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfd481, last bus=0
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: ACPI tables contain no PCI IRQ routing entries
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
Limiting direct PCI/PCI transfers.
isapnp: Scanning for PnP cards...
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
apm: BIOS not found.
Starting kswapd
kinoded started
VFS: Disk quotas vdquot_6.5.1
devfs: v1.12c (20020818) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
devfs: boot_options: 0x1
Detected PS/2 Mouse Port.
pty: 1024 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with HUB-6 MANY_PORTS MULTIPORT SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI ISAPNP enabled
ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 32000K size 1024 blocksize
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
PIIXa: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:07.0
PIIXa: chipset revision 2
PIIXa: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
PIIXa: neither IDE port enabled (BIOS)
PIIXb: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:07.1
PIIXb: chipset revision 2
PIIXb: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xffa0-0xffa7, BIOS settings: hdaio, hdbio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf, BIOS settings: hdcio, hddio
hda: FUJITSU MPA3026ATU, ATA DISK drive
blk: queue c0180d20, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
hdc: HITACHI CDR-8430, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: attached ide-disk driver.
hda: task_no_data_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: task_no_data_intr: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
hda: 5126964 sectors (2625 MB), CHS=635/128/63, (U)DMA
Partition check:
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 p2 < p5 p6 p7 >
ide: late registration of driver.
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
Initializing Cryptographic API
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 8192 bind 16384)
Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus PIM-SM
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
Resume Machine: This is normal swap space
Swsusp 1.0.3: kswsuspd starting
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
Freeing initrd memory: 299k freed
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
Mounted devfs on /dev
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
Mounted devfs on /dev
Freeing unused kernel memory: 156k freed
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10e
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,5), internal journal
Adding Swap: 205592k swap-space (priority -1)
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,7), internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
MSDOS FS: Using codepage 850
MSDOS FS: IO charset iso8859-15
Linux Tulip driver version 0.9.15-pre12 (Aug 9, 2002)
eth0: ADMtek Comet rev 17 at 0xfc00, 00:30:F1:31:79:89, IRQ 10.
inserting floppy driver for 2.4.22-10mdk
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a National Semiconductor PC87306
hdc: attached ide-cdrom driver.
hdc: ATAPI 32X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, DMA
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
Installing knfsd (copyright (C) 1996 okir@monad.swb.de).
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
VFS: Can't find ext2 filesystem on dev fd(2,0).
MSDOS FS: Using codepage 850
MSDOS FS: IO charset iso8859-15

Well, I see a hub being found, and I see a router being found, but I don't see a network card being found and/or initialized.. oh no, there it is.

What exactly is the relationship between eth0 and the hub and the router? When you saw the device being set to start at boot in Webmin, did you save those settings? Webmin often does not show the current settings, but the settings that would be default if you saved them (seems to depend on the module).

I would tell you what config file to change, but I'm on another PC atm and I don't remember offhand where services are (though I suspect /etc/rc.d/inittab). You might look there to see if eth0 is really set to start on boot, or you've just been led astray by Webmin .