February 18, 2009

Enabling Ethernet / Lan on Asus P5KPL-CM motherboard in Linux

I have a assembled computer with Asus P5-KPL CM motherboard. My wife wanted to learn something about Fedora while I am a Linux Mint Fan. Anyways after some argument I installed Fedora 9 GNU/Linux Distro. The first problem I faced was with enabling the network card / ethernet control /LAN card whatever you call.
Fortunately, Asus has provided driver files for GNU/linux in the accompanying CD. So how do I enable Lan using driver CD here are the steps:
1. Extract the LAN files in Windows or some other machine which supports handling of rar files. I don't know why it has been provided in RAR files, tarballs would have been better.
2. Anyways, Boot into Fedora 9 and determine the release version of kernel. Use command "uname -r".
3. Since, the ethernet is non-functional, we need to enable the same for which we need kernel-devel<version>rpm package. Download the same from download.fedora.redhat.com . Download from another machine or after booting from any other OS in which LAN is working.
4. Boot in Fedora and install kernel-devel<version>rpm package. Use the command "su -"and root password and then followed by "rpm -i kernel-devel<version>rpm package".
5. Now copy the extracted LAN driver files in a folder such as "/home/<user name>/driver" or similar. change the directory to "/home/<user name>/driver/l1e*/src. Install the files using the command "make install"
6. Restart and your Fedora is having an active LAN connection.
7. Go to "System > Preferences > Network" and assign proper gateway and ipaddress. Any You are ready to browse using Fedora.

I hope this small guide will help in enabling your LAN in Asus P5-KPL CM motherboard