More driver fun

I was wondering what would happen if my kernel was updated with this Atheros AR8131 driver.

Turns out, it breaks.

And if you don't have all the source code for your new Linux available then you can't compile it. *argh*

Again, the folk on the #opensuse channel helped out wonderfully and I managed to recover my system by copying the kernel module from the previous kernel into the appropriate place. Luckily this update was minor enough to allow this, but you cannot rely on this working always.

/lib/modules/[OLD_VERSION]/kernel/drivers/net/[MODULE_NAME]/[MODULE_NAME].ko

So in my case it was /usr/lib/modules/2.6.37.6-0.7-desktop/kernel/drivers/net/atl1e/atl1e.ko and then move it to the same directory but for your net kernel version.

Running modprobe atl1e reinstalls it to the kernel and rcnetwork restart restarts the network, ipconfig -a should list the network card once again.

In my case I found rebooting didn't solve it. I had to set the "module" against the eth0 hardware. With openSUSE this is easily done with Yast. I'm sure it's fairly easy normally too... search is your friend.