Re: Network problem: hard or soft?

["Jack Morgan" <j-morgan@example.com>]

> I switched my test server off yesterday to move and dust... it rebooted
> okay but it won't let me assign IP addresses to the network card (I
> can't ping the router; running ifup -a manually failed). The network
> card detected okay in the boot sequence and there are no errors for it.
>
> The connectivity light is on on the router, but off on the network card
> on the server. First time I've seen that - they are normally either both
> on or both off. When I turning server power off the light goes off on
> the router.

Probabley, electriciy is going through the NIC but it's not configured?

> Am I looking for a config problem or a new network card? This is the
> first time I've rebooted since I added new ip addresses to that card a
> month or two back. IIRC I just edited /etc/network/interfaces. (Debian
> potato).

I had a similar problem two months ago.  I just replaced the NIC but still
no dice.  It ended up being a configuration problem. You might check that
the NIC driver/module is being loaded:
(1) dmesg
(2) look in /lib/modules

Hope this helps,
-jack