Can Linux see your network card ?

Ethernet device names

Before you can determine whether Linux can see your network card, you need to know the device name for the ethernet card. This device name is used to refer to the ethernet network card when configuring the card within Linux.

Linux ethernet cards are named with the letters eth followed by a number. The number indicates which ethernet interface you are interested in.

With one network card in the Linux box, the interface is named eth0.

Subsequent cards (in the case of having multiple ethernet cards in the Linux box) will be numbered starting at 1 and continuing onwards eg. eth1, eth2 etc.

Is eth0 available ?

The easiest way to determine whether the eth0 device is available is to use the ifconfig command.

The ifconfig command is located in the /sbin subdirectory.

Type

/sbin/ifconfig eth0

to see both the TCP/IP and hardware settings of your ethernet card.

Two important values you should observe are the Interrupt and Base address. These values correspond to the IRQ and IO Port addresses for the network card. If these values match those set for the network card itself, then Linux is seeing the network card properly.