Red Hat Knowledgebase

The 2.4.9-e.34 kernel was our Update 3 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 2.1 and contained changes to the e1000 driver. These changes will also affect any kernel after this release, including the 2.4.9-e.35 kernel. The release notes explain these changes. The release notes can be found at:

https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-AS-2.1-Manual/release-notes/RELEASE-NOTES-U3

From the release notes we find that:
Intel PRO/1000 (e1000 driver)

• The e1000 driver has been updated from 5.0.43-k1 to 5.2.20-k1
  
• The new driver is addon/e1000_5220k1/e1000.o
  
• The older driver has been preserved as addon/e1000/e1000_5043k1.o
  
• The 4.4.12-k1 driver is also available as addon/e1000_4412k1/e1000_4412k1.o

You must first determine which driver you need. You can see currently loaded drivers with the lsmod command. If you see the e1000 module loaded, then remove it with the rmmod command.

rmmod e1000

Try loading one of the other e1000 drivers with the modprobe command. The convention is modprobe module-name. Try the following

modprobe e1000_5043k1
 -or-
modprobe e1000_4421k1

NOTE: Only one module should work, depending on your network card. If the modprobe command is successful, it will simply return a prompt. You can then verify the module is loaded with the lsmod command again.

When you determine which module your card requires, you can simply modify your /etc/modules.conf file with the correct module that you need to use. Change the line for your ethernet adapter (denotated as ethx, where x is a number 0, 1, 2, etc.). An example with eth0 would be:

alias eth0 e1000 to alias eth0 e1000_5043k1 -or- alias eth0 e1000_4412k1

When you make these changes, your next reboot should load the correct module specified in the /etc/modules.conf file.