# Is realtek 8139a chipset supported?



## rimas (Jan 27, 2009)

I'm new to bsd, so sorry if my question seems dumb. and yes, i tried googling and rtfm, but just cant work it out...

i try to install from bootonly cd over ftp, but damn freebsd 7.1 doesnt want to give me the option to use ethernet connection! why is that so? i use realtek 8139a chipset card and when the install is loading and the text is passing by quickly, i manage to catch something like 'rl0 [something something ethernet something something]', so i figure it finds my netcard.

any suggestions what i should look into?


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## tingo (Jan 27, 2009)

First of all, you can use the scroll lock button, followed by the page up / page down buttons to be able to view the console buffer. This will allow you to see the kernel messages so that you can see what the trouble with your network card is. Various 8139 variants are supported by the re(4) and rl(4) drivers.


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## hydra (Jan 27, 2009)

Yeah, I've run several 8139 chip based cards on FreeBSD, no problems at all.


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## SirDice (Jan 27, 2009)

```
dice@williscorto:~>dmesg | grep rl0
rl0: <RealTek 8139 10/100BaseTX> port 0xe800-0xe8ff mem 0xfebefc00-0xfebefcff irq 18 at device 7.0 on pci0
miibus0: <MII bus> on rl0
rl0: Ethernet address: 00:16:0a:04:b9:fe
rl0: [ITHREAD]
```

:e

It does act a bit weird if you dual boot with windows. I have to shutdown the machine completely before booting fbsd.


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