CentOS - Sep 2009 - Request advise regarding Driver for Intel Motherboard

Hello All

I made the mistake of assuming all Intel motherboards would be Linux
compatible out of the box and bought one without checking support
information. And now on initial install the Network is not
working....the Network port is not detected at all.

I have bought an Intel board DG41RQI
(http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/DG41RQ/index.htm)
which does not support Linux Out of Box. I am using a Core 2 Duo E7200
64 bit processor.

I am installing CentOS 5.x XEN, minimal install for a XEN dom0. The
Intel Linux Support page links to this page here
http://forgeftp.novell.com/driver-process/pub/update/realtek/sle10sp2/common/i586/
and lists a lot of drivers. Can someone please advise me which ones I
need to install for my particular motherboard & processor type?

Also, will these drivers clash with yum updatation from CentOS repos?

Can someone please guide and if possible, comment on issues I will
face. Intend to install minimal xen dom0 install and couple of low
utilization servers and linux desktop. Also, would like to know if I
can install Windows XP on same desktop under XEN.

With best regards and thanks.
Sanjay.

On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 10:31 PM, Sanjay Arora<sanjay.k.arora at gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hello All
>
> I made the mistake of assuming all Intel motherboards would be Linux
> compatible out of the box and bought one without checking support
> information. And now on initial install the Network is not
> working....the Network port is not detected at all.
>
> I have bought an Intel board DG41RQI
> (http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/DG41RQ/index.htm)
> which does not support Linux Out of Box. I am using a Core 2 Duo E7200
> 64 bit processor.
>
> I am installing CentOS 5.x XEN, minimal install for a XEN dom0. The
> Intel Linux Support page links to this page here
>
http://forgeftp.novell.com/driver-process/pub/update/realtek/sle10sp2/common/i586/
> and lists a lot of drivers. Can someone please advise me which ones I
> need to install for my particular motherboard & processor type?
>
> Also, will these drivers clash with yum updatation from CentOS repos?
>
> Can someone please guide and if possible, comment on issues I will
> face. Intend to install minimal xen dom0 install and couple of low
> utilization servers and linux desktop. Also, would like to know if I
> can install Windows XP on same desktop under XEN.
Install is CentOS 5.0. Will be updating after network starts working.
Tried to install driver file
realtek-r8169-kmp-smp-8.008.00_2.6.16.60_0.21-0.i586.rpm from the list
using the rpm command....(yum would ask for dependencies and will need
to update), but it seems that this file needs a lot of kernel
modules....listing them below (but strangely rpm output does not seem
to show version numbers required, instead shows a hash required. Have
given an example at the end of list...

kernel(kernel)
kernel(drivers)
kernel(drivers_pci)
kernel(kernel_irq)
kernel(init)
kernel(net_sched)
kernel(security)
kernel(arch_i386_mm)
kernel(lib)
kernel(net_ethernet)
kernel(mm)
kernel(vmlinux)

Instead of stating kernel.x.x.x is required by xxxx.xx.i586.rpm
it states
kernel(vmlinux) = d0dc9b0f03309730 is needed by xx.xx.i586.rpm

Does this mean I will need a custom kernel and will not be able to use
the normal kernel from centos repo or even dag repo?

Sanjay.